High-resolution resonant inelastic x-ray scattering study of the electron-phonon coupling in honeycomb α - Li 2IrO3

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.100.224303

Authors: J. G. Vale (University College London (UCL)) , C. D. Dashwood (University College London (UCL)) , E. Paris (Swiss Light Source) , L. S. I. Veiga (University College London (UCL)) , Mirian Garcia-Fernandez (Diamond Light Source) , A. Nag (Diamond Light Source) , A. Walters (Diamond Light Source) , K. Zhou (Diamond Light Source; Swiss Light Source) , I.-M. Pietsch (Augsburg University) , Anton Jesche (Augsburg University) , P. Gegenwart (Augsburg University) , R. Coldea (University of Oxford) , T. Schmitt (Swiss Light Source) , D. F. Mcmorrow (University College London)
Co-authored by industrial partner: No

Type: Journal Paper
Journal: Physical Review B , VOL 100

State: Published (Approved)
Published: December 2019
Diamond Proposal Number(s): 20569

Abstract: The excitations in honeycomb α − Li 2 IrO 3 have been investigated with high-resolution resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) at the O K edge. The low-energy response is dominated by a fully resolved ladder of excitations, which we interpret as being due to multiphonon processes in the presence of strong electron-phonon coupling (EPC). At higher energies, the orbital excitations are shown to be dressed by phonons. The high quality of the data permits a quantitative test of the analytical model for the RIXS cross section, which has been proposed to describe EPC in transition-metal oxides (TMOs). We find that the magnitude of the EPC is comparable to that found for a range of 3 d TMOs. This indicates that EPC may be of equal importance in determining the phenomenology displayed by corresponding 5 d -based systems.

Journal Keywords: Electron-phonon coupling; Iridates; Resonant inelastic x-ray scattering; X-ray absorption near-edge spectroscopy

Subject Areas: Materials, Physics


Instruments: I21-Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering (RIXS)

Added On: 16/01/2020 12:08

Discipline Tags:

Hard condensed matter - electronic properties Physics Materials Science

Technical Tags:

Scattering Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering (RIXS)