A critical re-examination of resonant soft x-ray Bragg forbidden reflections in magnetite

Abstract

Magnetite, Fe${}_3$O${}_4$, displays a highly complex low temperature crystal structure that may be charge and orbitally ordered. Many of the recent experimental claims of such ordering rely on resonant soft x-ray diffraction at the oxygen K and iron L edges. We have re-examined this system and undertaken soft x-ray diffraction experiments on a high-quality single crystal. Contrary to previous claims in the literature, we show that the intensity observed at the Bragg forbidden (001/2)${}_c$ reflection can be explained purely in terms of the low-temperature structural displacements around the resonant atoms. This does not necessarily mean that magnetite is not charge or orbitally ordered, but rather that the present sensitivity of resonant soft x-ray experiments does not allow conclusive demonstration of such ordering.

5 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Resonant X-ray diffraction studies on the charge ordering in magnetite
• Direct observation of t2g orbital ordering in magnetite

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Resonant Elastic Soft X-Ray Scattering
• Modeling the iron oxides and oxyhydroxides for the prediction of environmentally sensitive phase transformations
• Unraveling Orbital Correlations via Magnetic Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering
• Resonant x-ray scattering in 3d-transition-metal oxides: Anisotropy and charge orderings
• Intrinsic and extrinsic x-ray absorption effects in soft x-ray diffraction from the superstructure in magnetite