Hosted by: Mark Dean

I will describe Resonant Inelastic X-Ray Scattering (RIXS) experiments performed at the Swiss Light Source focusing on the detection of high-energy spin fluctuations on iron pnictides. I will show that RIXS has been successfully used to extract the spin excitation spectrum on NaFeAs, BaFe2As2, EuFe2As2 and SmFeAsO, parent compounds [1-3]. We investigated electron-doped NaFe1-xCoxAs observing the persistence of broad dispersive magnetic excitations in optimal and overdoped samples [1]. The energy of such modes is unaffected by doping and the magnetic weight per iron atom of magnons / paramagnons remains constant, demonstrating the impurity role of Co doping. The persistence of magnetic spectral weight is also caught by theoretical calculations. In the second part of the talk, I will present a combined Fe-L3 RIXS and Fe-Kβ X-rays emission spectroscopy (XES) study of isovalently doped BaFe2(As1-xPx)2 spanning a large portion of the phase diagram. RIXS measurements find the persistence of broad dispersive magnetic excitations for all doping levels. Remarkably, the energy of such modes is strongly hardened by doping differently from the cases of electron- and hole-doped BaFe2As2 [5]. On the other hand, XES experiments show a gradual quenching of the local magnetic moment, which is intriguing if compared to the behavior of spin correlations. We link the unconventional evolution of magnetism to the shift from 2- to 3-dimensional electronic structure of the system, hand in hand with the warping of the Fermi surface. Combined together these findings help to shed light on the real degree of electronic correlations in Fe pnictides. References [1] J. Pelliciari et al., Phys. Rev. B, 93, 134515 (2016); [2] J. Pelliciari et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 109, 122601 (2016); [3] J. Pelliciari et al., "Local and collective magnetism of EuFe2As2" accepted in Phys. Rev. B (2017); [4] K. J. Zhou et al, Nat. Comm., 4, 1470 (2013)