Display options
Share it on

Phys Rev Lett. 2013 Feb 22;110(8):087403. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.087403. Epub 2013 Feb 20.

Determining the short-range spin correlations in the spin-chain Li2CuO2 and CuGeO3 compounds using resonant inelastic x-ray scattering.

Physical review letters

Claude Monney, Valentina Bisogni, Ke-Jin Zhou, Roberto Kraus, Vladimir N Strocov, Günter Behr, Jiři Málek, Roman Kuzian, Stefan-Ludwig Drechsler, Steve Johnston, Alexandre Revcolevschi, Bernd Büchner, Henrik M Rønnow, Jeroen van den Brink, Jochen Geck, Thorsten Schmitt

Affiliations

  1. Research Department Synchrotron Radiation and Nanotechnology, Paul Scherrer Institut, CH-5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland.

PMID: 23473202 DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.087403

Abstract

We report a high-resolution resonant inelastic soft x-ray scattering study of the quantum magnetic spin-chain materials Li(2)CuO(2) and CuGeO(3). By tuning the incoming photon energy to the oxygen K edge, a strong excitation around 3.5 eV energy loss is clearly resolved for both materials. Comparing the experimental data to many-body calculations, we identify this excitation as a Zhang-Rice singlet exciton on neighboring CuO(4) plaquettes. We demonstrate that the strong temperature dependence of the inelastic scattering related to this high-energy exciton enables us to probe short-range spin correlations on the 1 meV scale with outstanding sensitivity.

Publication Types