Experimental verification of the electronic structure of MgB2 using electron energy-loss spectroscopy

Recently, it was found that MgB2 is a superconductor with a transition temp erature of 39 K. Electronic structure calculations suggest that an incomple tely filled sigma band in the covalently bonded B layers is critical to the superconductivity. In this work, electron energy-loss spectroscopy was use d to verify the electronic structure of MgB2 and qualitative agreement with calculations in the literature was observed. (C) 2001 American Institute o f Physics.