Novel magnetic excitations beyond the single- and double-magnons

Abstract

Conventional wisdom suggests that one photon that carries one unit of angular momentum can change the spin angular momentum of a magnetic system with one unit (delta Ms = +-1) at most. This would imply that a two-photon scattering process can manipulate the spin angular momentum of the magnetic system with a maximum of two units. Here we examine the fundamental limit of the photon-driven transport of angular momentum by studying the magnon spectrum of α-Fe2O3 using resonant inelastic x-ray scattering. We discovered a cascade of higher-rank magnons carrying double, triple, quadruple, and quintuple the spin angular momentum of a single-magnon. Guided by theoretical calculations, we reveal how a two-photons scattering process can create exotic higher-rank magnons and the relevance of these quasiparticles for magnon-based applications.

Work presented as an invited talk by Hebatalla Elnaggar at the IXS conference 2021 https://www.bnl.gov/rixsrexs2021/

References in corpus (2)

• Spin excitations in a single La${}_2$CuO${}_4$ layer
• Quadrupolar magnetic excitations in an isotropic spin-1 antiferromagnet

Cited by in corpus (7)

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• Systematic Mapping of Altermagnetic Magnons by Resonant Inelastic X-Ray Circular Dichroism
• A compact approach to higher-resolution resonant inelastic X-ray scattering detection using photoelectrons
• Magnetic excitations and absence of charge order in the van der Waals ferromagnet Fe${}_{4.75}$GeTe${}_2$
• Polarization dependency in Resonant Inelastic X-Ray Scattering