A simple approach is developed to study the excitation of a plasmon due to valence electronic correlations in the x ray absorption process. Assuming a complete separation between the core and the valence electrons, we introduce the plasmons in the system Hamiltonian externally according to the Bohm-Pines collective formalism and carry out the corresponding canonical transformations to separate the x ray photonplasmon-electron term. According to our calculations, the relative intensity of the plasmon process with respect to the main absorption, which represents single particle excitations is 0·12 times the interelectronic separation measured in Bohr radii. The theoretical estimates of the plasmon intensity agree satisfactorily with the experimental values for the Mn K and the Re L_III absorption discontinuities.

The shape of the plasmon absorption band resembles the main absorption edge, if the wave vector dependence of the plasmon frequency is neglected. The intensity of the second plasmon harmonic is about 3 per cent of the first plasmon satellite spectrum. The electron plasmon interaction modifies the shape of the plasmon spectrum.