Lattice coupling and Franck-Condon effects in K-edge resonant inelastic x-ray scattering

In this paper, we discuss our recent Cu K-edge resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) results for CuB2O4, a model system consisting of electronically isolated CuO4 plaquettes, which exhibits anomalies in the incident photon energy dependence that are not captured by electron-only models. We show that these anomalous features can be qualitatively described by extending the electron-only considerations to include the lattice degrees of freedom. Our findings have important general implications for the interpretation of K-edge RIXS results for electronically higher-dimensional transition metal oxides.