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Updated: May 18, 2026

Methods of Ex Situ and In Situ Investigations of Structural Transformations: The Case of Crystallization of Metallic Glasses
Published on: June 7, 2018
Unraveling orbital correlations with magnetic resonant inelastic x-ray scattering
Pasquale Marra1, Krzysztof Wohlfeld, Jeroen van den Brink
1Institute for Theoretical Solid State Physics, IFW Dresden, Helmholtzstrasse 20, 01069 Dresden, Germany.
Abstract:
Although orbital degrees of freedom are a factor of fundamental importance in strongly correlated transition-metal compounds, orbital correlations and dynamics remain very difficult to access, in particular by neutron scattering. Via a direct calculation of scattering amplitudes we show that instead magnetic resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) does reveal orbital correlations. In contrast to neutron scattering, the intensity of the magnetic excitations in RIXS depends very sensitively on the symmetry of the orbitals that spins occupy and on photon polarizations. We show in detail how this effect allows magnetic RIXS to distinguish between alternating orbital-ordered and ferro-orbital (or orbital liquid) states.
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