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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Circular dichroism in resonant inelastic x-ray scattering from birefringence in CuO

Abhishek Nag1,2,*,†, Gérard Sylvester Perren1,*, Hiroki Ueda1, A. T. Boothroyd3, D. Prabhakaran3, M. García-Fernández4, S. Agrestini4, Ke-Jin Zhou4, and Urs Staub1,‡

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
  • †Contact author: abhishek.nag@ph.iitr.ac.in
  • ‡Contact author: urs.staub@psi.ch
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Phys. Rev. Research 7, L022047 – Published 30 May, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.7.L022047

Abstract

Resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) has become a prominent technique to study quasiparticle excitations. With advances in polarization analysis capabilities at different facilities, RIXS offers exceptional potential for investigating symmetry-broken quasiparticles such as chiral phonons and magnons. At optical wavelengths, birefringence can severely affect polarization states in low-symmetry systems. Here we show its importance for soft x-ray resonances. Given the growing interest in circular dichroism (CD) in RIXS, it is important to evaluate how birefringence may affect the RIXS spectra of anisotropic systems. We investigate CuO, a well-known anisotropic material, using Cu L3-edge RIXS and detect significant CD in both magnetic and orbital excitations in the collinear antiferromagnetic phase. We demonstrate that the CD can be modeled by a proper treatment of RIXS scattering amplitudes derived from single-ion calculations with birefringence. Recognizing these effects is crucial for unambiguous identification of subtle dichroic effects induced by symmetry-broken quasiparticles. Furthermore, the combined sensitivity of RIXS and birefringence to local symmetry presents an opportunity to study microscopic changes driven by external perturbations.

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Phys. Rev. Research 7, L022047– Published 30 May, 2025
  • Received 27 January 2025
  • Accepted 16 May 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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