Proposal for detecting spin-chirality terms in Mott insulators via resonant inelastic x-ray scattering

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential of resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) to detect spin-chirality excitations in Mott insulators, analyzing various lattice types and proposing experimental considerations for observing these effects.

Contribution

It demonstrates that RIXS can detect spin-chirality terms in Mott insulators near a pre-edge, with detailed lattice-specific analyses showing their presence at different orders.

Findings

Spin-chirality terms are absent in standard RIXS setups but can be detected near a pre-edge.

These terms are present in square, kagome, triangular, and honeycomb lattices.

Detection of spin-chirality terms can complement Raman spectroscopy in studying quantum spin liquids.

Abstract

We consider the question of whether resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) can be used to detect many-body excitations that are coupled to the spin-chirality terms S_i . (S_j x S_k) in a Mott insulator. We find that while the spin-chirality terms are in general absent in the usual experimental setups of RIXS, there are prospects of realizing such terms if one considers instead the scattering near a pre-edge. We then perform detailed analyses for the square and the kagome lattices, and brief analyses for the triangular and the honeycomb lattices, in which we show that the spin-chirality terms are indeed present in all the above lattices, but that they occur at a higher order in our expansion for the kagome and the honeycomb lattices. The merit of using RIXS in addition to Raman spectroscopy to detect excitations that are coupled to the spin-chirality terms is also briefly discussed in the context of the emergent gauge boson in the U(1) Dirac spin liquid.