The presence of doubly excited states (DESs) above the core-hole ionization threshold nontrivially modulates the x-ray absorption because the participator Auger decay couples DESs to the underlying low-energy core-hole continuum. We show that coupling also affects the high-energy continuum populated by the spectator Auger decay of DESs. For the K−L223 Auger decay of the 1s−13p−14s21P state in argon, the competing nonresonant path is assigned to the recapture of the 1s photoelectron caused by emission of the fast electron from the shake-up K−L223 decay of the 1s−1 ion.
