Resonant inelastic soft X-ray scattering (RIXS) [1, 2] is a powerful bulk-sensitive photon-in / photon-out spectroscopic and scattering probe of the electronic structure of condensed matter with elemental sensitivity. It is a unique tool for studying low energy excitations in complex correlated systems, being directly sensitive to charge-, orbital-, spin-, and lattice-degrees of freedom [3-6]. Dedicated instrumentation for soft X-ray RIXS with ultra-high resolution in energy and momentum spaces has become available thereby enabling characterization of collective excitations such as magnons and phonons. In this presentation I give a brief introduction of RIXS techniques and a few examples of scientific applications. I will also introduce the I21-RIXS Beamline which is currently under construction at Diamond Light Source.

References

[1]  A.Kotani and S.Shin, Rev. Mod. Phys. 73, 203 (2001)

[2] Luuk J. P. Ament, M van Veenendaal, and T. P., Devereaux et al., Rev. Mod. Phys. 83, 705 (2011)

[3] M. Le Tacon, G. Ghiringhelli, and J. Chaloupka et al., Nature Phys. 7, 725 (2011)

[4] J. Schlappa, K. Wohlfeld, and K. J. Zhou et al. Nature 485, 82 (2012)

[5] M. P. M. Dean, R. S. Springell, and C. Monney et al., Nature Mater. 11, 850 (2012)

[6] K. J. Zhou, Y. B. Huang, and C. Monney et al., Nature commun. 4, 1470 (2013)