2005/10/31 by Jeroen van den Brink · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1209/0295-5075/80/47003
published as Europhysics Letters 80, 47003 (2007) · 4 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2007/01/22 · arxiv updated 2015/06/25
Recent experiments show that indirect resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) is a new probe of spin dynamics. Here I derive the cross-section for magnetic RIXS and determine the momentum dependent four-spin correlation function that it measures. These results show that this technique offers information on spin dynamics that is complementary to e.g. neutron scattering. The RIXS spectrum of Heisenberg antiferromagnets is calculated. It turns out that only scattering processes that involve at least two magnons are allowed. Other selection rules imply that the scattering intensity vanishes for specific transferred momenta \bf q, in particular for \bf q=0. The calculated spectra agree very well with the experimental data.