Resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) at the L-edge of transition metal elements is now commonly used to probe single magnon excitations. Here we show that single magnon excitations can also be measured with RIXS at the K-edge of the surrounding ligand atoms when the center heavy metal elements have strong spin-orbit coupling. This is demonstrated with oxygen K-edge RIXS experiments on the perovskite Sr2IrO4, where low energy peaks from single magnon excitations were observed. This new application of RIXS has excellent potential to be applied to a wide range of magnetic systems based on heavy elements, for which the L-edge RIXS energy resolutions in the hard X-ray region is usually poor.
@article{arxiv.1502.00752,
title = {Probing single magnon excitations in Sr$_2$IrO$_4$ using O $K$-edge resonant inelastic X-ray scattering},
author = {X. Liu and M. P. M. Dean and J. Liu and S. G. Chiuzbăian and N. Jaouen and A. Nicolaou and W. G. Yin and C. Rayan Serrao and R. Ramesh and H. Ding and J. P. Hill},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1502.00752},
year = {2015}
}