Direct experimental determination of the dispersion of a final state energy band

We report the first absolute and continous experimental determination of the dispersion of an unoccupied electron energy band in copper. This has been achieved by monitoring the extremal behaviour of binding energies in angular resolved photoelectron energy distribution curves obtained with a tunable light source. By this method the absolute value of the wave vector for transitions originating from the symmetry line ∑ was determined. The experiments confirm that the final state band deviates strongly from a parabola.