Photon polarization precession spectroscopy for high-resolution studies of spin waves

Phys Rev Lett. 2014 Mar 21;112(11):117205. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.117205. Epub 2014 Mar 18.

Abstract

A new type of spectroscopy for high-resolution studies of spin waves that relies on resonant scattering of hard x rays is introduced. The energy transfer in the scattering process is encoded in the precession of the polarization vector of the scattered photons. Thus, the energy resolution of such a spectroscopy is independent of the bandwidth of the probing radiation. The measured quantity resembles the intermediate scattering function of the magnetic excitations in the sample. At pulsed x-ray sources, especially x-ray lasers, the proposed technique allows us to take single-shot spectra of the magnetic dynamics. The method opens new avenues to study low-energy nonequilibrium magnetic processes in a pump-probe setup.