On Excitations in Technologically Relevant Materials

We will discuss both core and valence excitations in a variety of materials relevant to technology, including fullerenes, battery compounds, titanium-based perovskites and ferroelectrics, transition-metal dichalcogenides and others.  Measured excitation spectra that can are observed using inelastic x-ray scattering, electron scattering and optical absorption can be modeled using techniques that explicitly take excitonic effects into account.  The spectra can give insight into electron states, excitonic levels, crystal structure and local atom geometries.  Observing how density-functional calculations, crystallography, observed excitation spectra and their theoretical counterparts can give one self-consistent account of physic systems is particularly gratifying.