1212.0112 (Pasquale Marra et al.)

Establishing Theoretically the Capacity of Resonant Inelastic X-ray
Scattering to Probe the Phase and Excitations of the Superconducting Order
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Pasquale Marra, Steffen Sykora, Krzysztof Wohlfeld, Jeroen van den Brink

The capability to probe the dispersion of elementary spin, charge, orbital, and lattice excitations has positioned Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering (RIXS) at the forefront of photon science. Here we develop the scattering theory for RIXS on superconductors, calculating its momentum-dependent scattering amplitude. Considering superconductors with different pairing symmetries we show that the low-energy scattering is strongly affected by the superconducting gap and coherence factors. This establishes RIXS as a tool to disentangle pairing symmetries and to probe the elementary excitations of unconventional superconductors.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.0112