The electronic structure of NdVO3, YVO3 has been investigated as a function of sample temperature using resonant inelastic soft x-ray scattering at the V L3-edge. Most of the observed spectral features are in good agreement with an atomic crystal-field multiplet model. However, a low energy feature is observed at ~0.4 eV that cannot be explained by crystal-field arguments. The resonant behaviour of this feature establishes it as due to excitations of the V t2g states. Moreover, this feature exhibits a strong sample temperature dependence, reaching maximum intensity in the orbitally-ordered phase of NdVO3, before becoming suppressed at low temperatures. This behaviour indicates that the origin of this feature is a collective orbital excitation, i.e. the bi-orbiton.
@article{arxiv.1411.4539,
title = {Low-energy V t2g orbital excitations in NdVO3},
author = {J. Laverock and B. Chen and A. R. H. Preston and D. Newby and L. F. J. Piper and L. D. Tung and G. Balakrishnan and P. -A. Glans and J. -H. Guo and K. E. Smith},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1411.4539},
year = {2014}
}