AUGER DECAY OF QUASI-PARTICLE STATES - CALCULATION OF THE NI 3P PHOTOEMISSION SPECTRUM IN NICL2

We have calculated the Ni 3p x-ray photoemission spectrum (XPS) in NiCl2, taking into account the lifetime of Ni 3p hole states due to the M2,3M4,5M4,5 super-Coster-Kronig decay process. We show that the LS-term dependence of the lifetimes strongly affects the whole spectral shape because the multiplet splitting of the 3p XPS is large. This indicates a breakdown of the assumption that the lifetimes of final states are the same, which has been widely adopted in the analysis of core-level excitation spectra.