- Letter
- Open Access
Disorder-induced damping of spin excitations in Cr-doped
Phys. Rev. Research 8, L012028 – Published 2 February, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/rkjn-hf7z
Abstract
In doped Hund's metals, such as the iron-based superconductors, effects like charge doping and chemical pressure are often considered the dominant factors. Partial chemical substitution, however, inevitably introduces disorder. Here, we investigate spin excitations in Ba( (CrBFA) by high-resolution resonant inelastic x-ray scattering for samples with and . In CrBFA, Cr acts as a hole dopant, but also introduces localized spins that compete with Fe-derived magnetic excitations. We found that the Fe-derived magnetic excitations are softened and damped, becoming overdamped for . At this doping level, complementary angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy measurements show increased electronic localization and a suppression of the nematic band splitting present in the parent compound. We thus propose a localized spin model that explicitly incorporates substitutional disorder and Cr local moments, successfully reproducing our key observations. Our findings reveal a case where disorder dominates over charge doping in the case of a Hund's metal.
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