Resonant soft x-ray inelastic scattering and soft x-ray emission study of the electronic structure of<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mi>α</mml:mi><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mtext>-MoO</mml:mtext></mml:mrow><mml:mn>3</mml:mn></mml:msub></mml:mrow></mml:math>

The electronic structure of quasi-low-dimensional solids is a topic of enduring interest due to the complex many-body interactions that exist in such materials and their resulting exotic physical properties. A well studied class of such materials is the quasi-low-dimensional metals known collectively as molybdenum oxide bronzes. These materials are all derived from the band insulator $\ensuremath{\alpha}{\text{-MoO}}_{3}$. We report here a study of the electronic structure of $\ensuremath{\alpha}{\text{-MoO}}_{3}$ using resonant inelastic x-ray scattering and soft x-ray emission spectroscopy. We observe significant variation in x-ray scattering as a function of the relative orientation of the polarization vector of the incident light and the crystal axes. We interpret our data using a model of $\mathbf{k}$-selective soft x-ray scattering.