Resonant inelastic x-ray scattering study of vector chiral ordered kagomé antiferromagnet

Zijian Xiong, Trinanjan Datta, Dao-Xin Yao

Published 2020-04-06Version 1

We study the resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) features of vector chiral ordered kagom\'{e} antiferromagnetic materials. Utilizing a group theoretical formalism that respects lattice site symmetry, we calculated the $L$ -edge magnon contribution for the kagom\'{e} vesignieite compound $\rm{BaCu_{3}V_{2}O_{8}(OH)_{2}}$. In contrast to inelastic neutron scattering, we show that incoming and outgoing polarization dependence of the $L$ -edge RIXS spectrum can be used to distinguish magnon branches. At the $K$ -edge, we derived the two-site effective RIXS and Raman scattering operator for bimagnon excitation in vesignieite using the Shastry-Shraiman formalism. Our derivation explicitly considers spin-orbit coupling effects in virtual hopping processes. We find vector chiral correlation (four spin) contribution that is proportional to the RIXS spectrum. Our scattering operator formalism can be applied to a host of realistic non-collinear non-coplanar materials at both the $L$ and $K$ -edge. We demonstrate that vector chiral correlations can be accessed by current RIXS experiments.