  Shear bands resulting from plastic deformation in cold-rolled
Al$_{88}$Y$_{7}$Fe$_{5}$ metallic glass were observed to display alternating
density changes along their propagation direction. Electron-energy loss
spectroscopy (EELS) was used to investigate the volume plasmon energy losses in
and around shear bands. Energy shifts of the peak centre and changes in the
peak width (FWHM) reflecting the damping were precisely determined within an
accuracy of a few meV using an open source python module (Hyperspy) to fit the
shapes of the plasmon and zero-loss peaks with Lorentzian functions. The
maximum bulk plasmon energy shifts were calculated for the bright and dark
shear band segments relative to the matrix to be about 38 and 14 meV,
respectively. The damping was observed to be larger for the denser regions. The
analysis presented here suggests that the changes in the plasmons are caused by
two contributions: (i) Variable damping in the shear band segments due to
changes in the medium-range order (MRO). This affects the static structure
factor S(k), which, in turn, leads to either reduced or increased damping
according to the Ziman-Baym formula. (ii) The ionic density and the effective
electron mass appearing in the zero-momentum plasmon frequency formula
$E_p(q=0)$ are coupled and give rise to small variations in the plasmon energy.
The model predicts plasmon energy shifts in the order of meV.
