Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering on Spin-Orbit Coupled Insulating Iridates

We determine how the elementary excitations of iridium-oxide materials, which are dominated by a strong relativistic spin-orbit coupling, appear in Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering (RIXS). Whereas the RIXS spectral weight at the L2 x-ray edge vanishes, we find it to be strong at the L3-edge. Applying this to Sr2IrO4, we observe that RIXS, besides being sensitive to local doublet to quartet transitions, meticulously maps out the strongly dispersive delocalized excitations of the low-lying spin-orbit doublets.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Universal Short-time Behaviour of the Dynamic Fully Frustrated XY Model

With Monte Carlo methods we investigate the dynamic relaxation of the fully frustrated XY model in two dimensions below or at the Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition temperature. Special attention is drawn to the sublattice structure of the dynamic evolution. Short-time scaling behaviour is found and universality is confirmed. The critical exponent $\theta$ is measured for different temperature and with different algorithms.Comment: 18 pages, LaTeX, 8 ps-figure

Screening in YBCO at large wave vectors

We present experimental inelastic x-ray scattering (IXS) and ab initio time-dependent density-functional-theory (TDDFT) studies of YBa2Cu3O7-{\delta}. The response of the low-lying Ba 5p and Y 4p core electrons is shown to interact strongly with the Cu 3d and O 2p excitations, with important consequences on screening. The agreement between IXS and TDDFT results is excellent, apart from a new type of excitations, mainly related to loosely bound Ba electrons and significantly affected by correlations. This points to correlation mechanisms not fully described by TDDFT that might have a role in giving rise to antiscreening.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Dynamic SU(2) Lattice Gauge Theory at Finite Temperature

The dynamic relaxation process for the (2+1)--dimensional SU(2) lattice gauge theory at critical temperature is investigated with Monte Carlo methods. The critical initial increase of the Polyakov loop is observed. The dynamic exponents $\theta$ and $z$ as well as the static critical exponent $\beta/\nu$ are determined from the power law behaviour of the Polyakov loop, the auto-correlation and the second moment at the early stage of the time evolution. The results are well consistent and universal short-time scaling behaviour of the dynamic system is confirmed. The values of the exponents show that the dynamic SU(2) lattice gauge theory is in the same dynamic universality class as the dynamic Ising model.Comment: 10 pages with 2 figure

Dynamic Approach to the Fully Frustrated XY Model

Using Monte Carlo simulations, we systematically investigate the non-equilibrium dynamics of the chiral degree of freedom in the two-dimensional fully frustrated XY model. The critical initial increase of the staggered chiral magnetization is observed. By means of the short-time dynamics approach, we estimate the second order phase transition temperature $T_{c}$ and all the dynamic and static critical exponents $\theta$, z, $\beta$ and $\nu$.Comment: 5 pages with 6 figures include

Concealed fertility and extended female sexuality in a non-human primate (Macaca assamensis)

In numerous primates living in mixed-sex groups, females display probabilistic cues of fertility to simultaneously concentrate paternity to dominant males while diluting it amongst others as a means to reduce the risk of infanticide and to increase male care for offspring. A few species, however, lack these cues and potentially conceal fertility from males; yet, to date, little is known about mating patterns and their underlying proximate mechanisms in such species. Here, we investigated mating activity and sexual consortships relative to female reproductive state in wild Assamese macaques (Macaca assamensis), a species where females lack prominent anogenital swellings and copulation calls. During two mating seasons (2837 contact hours) we recorded sexual and social behaviors, sexual consortships, and collected 1178 fecal samples (n = 15 females) which were analyzed for progestogen concentrations to assess female reproductive state and to determine the timing of ovulation and conception. Although mostly conceiving in their first ovarian cycle, females were sexually receptive throughout the entire 4-month mating season, and within-cycle mating frequencies were not increased during fertile phases. Dominant males did not monopolize fertile matings, and consortships by high-ranking males lasted for long periods, which were not exclusively linked to female fertile phases. Furthermore, females copulated promiscuously but not randomly, i.e. for almost every female, matings were concentrated to a certain male, irrespective of male rank. Collectively, we demonstrate that fertility is undisclosed to males. The extreme extended female sexuality facilitated by concealed fertility may allow females to create differentiated mating relationships within a promiscuous mating system. Our study provides important new insight into the plasticity of female sexuality in non-human primates

Imaging density disturbances in water with 41.3 attosecond time resolution

We show that the momentum flexibility of inelastic x-ray scattering may be exploited to invert its loss function, alowing real time imaging of density disturbances in a medium. We show the disturbance arising from a point source in liquid water, with a resolution of 41.3 attoseconds ($4.13 \times 10^{-17}$ sec) and 1.27 $\AA$ ($1.27 \times 10^{-8}$ cm). This result is used to determine the structure of the electron cloud around a photoexcited molecule in solution, as well as the wake generated in water by a 9 MeV gold ion. We draw an analogy with pump-probe techniques and suggest that energy-loss scattering may be applied more generally to the study of attosecond phenomena.Comment: 4 pages, 4 color figure

Dynamic Monte Carlo Study of the Two-Dimensional Quantum XY Model

We present a dynamic Monte Carlo study of the Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition for the spin-1/2 quantum XY model in two dimensions. The short-time dynamic scaling behaviour is found and the dynamical exponent $\theta$, $z$ and the static exponent $\eta$ are determined at the transition temperature.Comment: 6 pages with 3 figure

Inelastic Scattering from Core-electrons: a Multiple Scattering Approach

The real-space multiple-scattering (RSMS) approach is applied to model non-resonant inelastic scattering from deep core electron levels over a broad energy spectrum. This approach is applicable to aperiodic or periodic systems alike and incorporates ab initio, self-consistent electronic structure and final state effects. The approach generalizes to finite momentum transfer a method used extensively to model x-ray absorption spectra (XAS), and includes both near edge spectra and extended fine structure. The calculations can be used to analyze experimental results of inelastic scattering from core-electrons using either x-ray photons (NRIXS) or electrons (EELS). In the low momentum transfer region (the dipole limit), these inelastic loss spectra are proportional to those from XAS. Thus their analysis can provide similar information about the electronic and structural properties of a system. Results for finite momentum transfer yield additional information concerning monopole, quadrupole, and higher couplings. Our results are compared both with experiment and with other theoretical calculations.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev.

Magnetic Excitations in La2CuO4 probed by Indirect Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering

Recent experiments on La$_2$CuO$_4$ suggest that indirect resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) might provide a probe for transversal spin dynamics. We present in detail a systematic expansion of the relevant magnetic RIXS cross section by using the ultrashort core-hole lifetime (UCL) approximation. We compute the scattering intensity and its momentum dependence in leading order of the UCL expansion. The scattering is due to two-magnon processes and is calculated within a linear spin-wave expansion of the Heisenberg spin model for this compound, including longer range and cyclic spin interactions. We observe that the latter terms in the Hamiltonian enhance the first moment of the spectrum if they strengthen the antiferromagnetic ordering. The theoretical spectra agree very well with experimental data, including the observation that scattering intensity vanishes for the transferred momenta ${\bf q} = (0,0)$ and ${\bf q} = (\pi,\pi)$. We show that at finite temperature there is an additional single-magnon contribution to the scattering with a spectral weight proportional to $T^3$. We also compute the leading corrections to the UCL approximation and find them to be small, putting the UCL results on a solid basis. All this univocally points to the conclusion that the observed low temperature RIXS intensity in La$_2$CuO$_4$ is due to two-magnon scattering.Comment: 11 pages, 13 figures, Phys. Rev. B 77, 134428 (2008) (v4: corrected figs 7