Orbital-selective electronic excitations in iron arsenides revealed by simulated nonresonant inelastic X-ray scattering

Tsutsui, Kenji; Kaneshita, Eiji*; Toyama, Takami*

Physical Review B, 92(19), p.195103_1 - 195103_5, 2015/11

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.92.195103

Nonresonant inelastic X-ray scattering (NIXS) is a possible tool to detect charge excitations in electron systems. In addition, multipole transitions at high-momentum-transfer region open a new possibility to determine orbital-selective electronic excitations in multi-orbital itinerant 3 electron systems. As a theoretical example, we chose the antiferromagnetic state of iron arsenides and demonstrate that the orbital-selective excitations are detectable by choosing appropriate momentum transfer in NIXS. We propose that both NIXS and resonant inelastic X-ray scattering are complementary to each other for fully understanding the nature of orbital excitations in multi-orbital itinerant electron systems.