Circular Dichroism in Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering: Probing Altermagnetic Domains in MnTe

Abstract

X-ray magnetic circular dichroism provides a means to identify ferromagnetic, chiral, and altermagnetic orders via their time-reversal-symmetry ($\mathcal{T}$) breaking. However, differentiating magnetic domains related by crystallographic symmetries remains a technical challenge. Here we reveal a circular dichroism (CD) in the resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) spectra from the altermagnetic MnTe. The azimuthal dependence of the RIXS-CD intensity of the magnon excitations indicates a dominant occupation of a single altermagnetic domain. The RIXS-CD in our scattering geometry is ascribed to the mirror-symmetry breaking associated with the $\mathcal{T}$-broken altermagnetic order. Our results establish RIXS-CD as a domain-sensitive probe of elementary excitations in quantum materials.

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Systematic Mapping of Altermagnetic Magnons by Resonant Inelastic X-Ray Circular Dichroism
• Dominant orbital magnetization in the prototypical altermagnet MnTe
• Saturated and Anisotropic Magnetostriction in an Altermagnet
• Polarization dependency in Resonant Inelastic X-Ray Scattering
• Detection of ferroic octupole ordering in $d$-wave altermagnetic rutile-type compounds