Ultrafast RIXS of orbital-resolved valence-band reshaping in photoexcited graphite
-edge resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS), used in the time domain, provides a momentum- and orbital-selective spectroscopic fingerprint of transient valence-band reshaping. Momentum- and orbital-selective measurements along the [Formula: see text] contour disentangle [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] contributions and reveal a structured redistribution of spectral weight emerging within ∼70 femtoseconds and evolving on picosecond timescales. Nonequilibrium first-principles RIXS calculations performed within a frozen-lattice approximation show that the earliest response is dominated by electronic correlations and transient screening. At longer delays, the dynamics become strongly momentum dependent: Near [Formula: see text], the signal reflects the decay of the electronic contribution to the renormalized band structure under a hot-phonon bottleneck, whereas at the [Formula: see text]-point van Hove singularity, it reveals a characteristic spectroscopic signature consistent with electron-phonon-driven band red shift and lifetime broadening induced by strongly coupled optical phonons. A three-temperature model constrained by the orbital-resolved tr-RIXS data captures the ensuing energy cascade through a hot-phonon reservoir dominated by the [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] modes. These results establish time-domain RIXS as a complementary probe of transient band-structure renormalization and mode-selective energy flow in quantum materials.
Authors
- Marco Malvestuto (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4418-035X)
- Antonio Caretta (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0580-3542)
- Primož Rebernik Ribič (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5555-601X)
- Marco Zangrando (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8860-3962)
- Carlo Alberto Brondin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3732-858X)
- L. Giannessi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7643-9840)
- D. Garzella
- Michele Manfredda (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1965-8350)
- Richa Bhardwaj (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3927-4239)
- Claudia Draxl (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3523-6657)
- Simone Laterza (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8971-6608)
- F. Parmigiani (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9529-7406)
- Filippo Sottocorona (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9160-9289)
- Dino Novko (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1673-2973)
- Matteo Zamolo
- Alessandro Gessini (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5325-4029)
- Benedikt Maurer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9152-7390)
- Alberto Simoncig (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4471-5927)
- Alexander Demidovich (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2355-2257)
- E. Allaria (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9570-6361)
- Alexander Darius Brynes (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2343-7566)
- Beatrice Volpato
- Elena Babici
- Elias Richter
- Peter Susnjar
- Alessandro Hervat (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-6455-5240)
Institutions
- University of Trieste (IT)
- Elettra-Sincrotrone Trieste S.C.p.A. (IT)
- Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (DE)
- Istituto Officina dei Materiali (IT)
- Institute of Structure of Matter (IT)
- Institute of Physics (HR)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Science Advances
- Published
- 2026-09-11
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aeg6983
- Primary Topic
- Graphene research and applications
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- Hrvatska Zaklada za Znanost