Magnetic excitations beyond the single- and double-magnons

Hebatalla Elnaggar; Abhishek Nag; Maurits W. Haverkort; Mirian Garcia-Fernandez; Andrew Walters; Ru Pan Wang; Ke Jin Zhou; Frank de Groot

doi:10.1038/s41467-023-38341-8

Magnetic excitations beyond the single- and double-magnons

Hebatalla Elnaggar^*, Abhishek Nag, Maurits W. Haverkort, Mirian Garcia-Fernandez, Andrew Walters, Ru Pan Wang, Ke Jin Zhou^*, Frank de Groot^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

A photon carrying one unit of angular momentum can change the spin angular momentum of a magnetic system with one unit (ΔM_s = ±1) at most. This implies that a two-photon scattering process can manipulate the spin angular momentum of the magnetic system with a maximum of two units. Herein we describe a triple-magnon excitation in α-Fe₂O₃, which contradicts this conventional wisdom that only 1- and 2-magnon excitations are possible in a resonant inelastic X-ray scattering experiment. We observe an excitation at exactly three times the magnon energy, along with additional excitations at four and five times the magnon energy, suggesting quadruple and quintuple-magnons as well. Guided by theoretical calculations, we reveal how a two-photon scattering process can create exotic higher-rank magnons and the relevance of these quasiparticles for magnon-based applications.

Original language	English
Article number	2749
Number of pages	8
Journal	Nature Communications
Volume	14
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-38341-8
Publication status	Published - Dec 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s).

Funding

We acknowledge the staff of beamline I21 of Diamond Light Source for their help in setting up and running the experiments. We acknowledge the following fundings: Dutch Research Council Rubicon Fellowship Project No. 019.201EN.010 (H.E.), ERC advanced Grant XRAYonACTIVE No. 340279 (F.d.G.).

Funders	Funder number
European Research Council	340279
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek	019.201EN.010

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s41467-023-38341-8Final published version, 2.24 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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AU - Walters, Andrew

AU - Wang, Ru Pan

AU - Zhou, Ke Jin

AU - de Groot, Frank

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Magnetic excitations beyond the single- and double-magnons

Abstract

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