Double-plasmon excitations in the alkali metals

Abstract = {{We calculate the excitation spectrum of the electron liquid using the formalism of correlated basis functions including time-dependent pair correlations. Using the static structure factor of the ground state as sole input, our formalism is naturally suited for studying correlation effects on the energy loss function. The most prominent example is the double plasmon, for which our results are in good agreement with recent experiments on various alkali metals.}}