Conduction electron distributions in europium and gadolinium by soft x-ray spectroscopy

A study of the 5d6s conduction band in Eu and Gd by soft X-ray spectroscopy is presented. Our observation that the density of occupied d states is lower for Eu than for Gd is supported by band structure calculations. For Gd, the convolution integrals between the 3p_3/2 inner level Lorentzian distribution and the A.P.W. densities of states are compared with our experimental M_m spectra. The position of the occupied 4f states with respect to the Fermi level is determined, compared with X-ray photoemission data and discussed for both metals.