Photon Polarization Precession Spectroscopy for High-Resolution Studies of Spinwaves

A new type of spectroscopy for high-resolution studies of spin waves that relies on resonant scattering of hard x-rays is introduced. The energy transfer in the scattering process is encoded in the precession of the polarization vector of the scattered photons. Thus, the energy resolution of such a spectroscopy is independent of the bandwidth of the probing radiation. The measured quantity resembles the intermediate scattering function of the magnetic excitations in the sample. At pulsed x-ray sources, especially x-ray lasers, the proposed technique allows to take single-shot spectra of the magnetic dynamics. The method opens new avenues to study low-energy non-equilibrium magnetic processes in a pump-probe setup.