Head: Prof. Dr. Matthieu Le Tacon
We explore the dynamic of spin, charge, orbital and lattice degrees of freedoms in strongly correlated transition metal oxides using inelastic photon scattering techniques to gain insights about competing ordering tendencies in these materials. To this endeavor, we exploit photons from a large fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum to map out materials collective excitations in the energy-momentum space, akin to inelastic neutron scattering.
Inelastic scattering of visible photons (Raman scattering with typical photon energies of a few eV) is a highly versatile technique that allows us to probe the dynamics of solids at the center of the Brillouin zone (q = 0) with very high energy resolution and in a large variety of environments (low temperatures, high pressures, uniaxial or epitaxial strains). Those are complemented with resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) in the soft (respectively hard) x-ray range for 3d (respectively 5d) transition metal oxides to study the dispersion of magnetic and/or orbital excitations, akin to inelastic neutron scattering, as well as with non-resonant inelastic hard x-ray scattering to study the dispersion of phonons. These x-ray based methods are carried out on various synchrotron sources all around the world.
