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High-Resolution Inelastic X-Ray Scattering I: Context, Spectrometers, Samples, and Superconductors

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Synchrotron Light Sources and Free-Electron Lasers

Abstract

This paper reviews nonresonant, meV-resolution inelastic x-ray scattering (IXS), as applied to the measurement of atomic dynamics of crystalline materials. It, in conjunction with a companion paper on scattering theory and calculations (Part II, also in this handbook), is designed to be an introductory, though in-depth, look at the field for those who may be interested in performing IXS experiments, or in understanding the operation of IXS spectrometers, or those desiring a practical introduction to harmonic phonons in crystals at finite momentum transfers. The treatment of most topics begins from ground level, with an emphasis on practical issues, as they have occurred to the author in two decades introducing meV-resolved IXS in Japan, including designing and building two IXS beamlines, spectrometers, and associated instrumentation, performing experiments, and helping and teaching other scientists. After a short introduction to the broader field of IXS, this paper, Part I, discusses the relative merits of IXS as compared to other methods of investigating atomic dynamics, especially inelastic neutron scattering (INS). A very brief overview of spectrometer operation and the types of spectra observed is also given. The paper then focuses on the main issues relevant for spectrometer design, including an introduction to relevant formulas from dynamical diffraction and an in-depth discussion of the how various design issues have been addressed in the different types of operating spectrometers, including spectrometers using spherically figured analyzers and the relatively new “post-sample collimation” (PSC) systems. Finally, there is a discussion of the types of experiments that have been carried out mentioning of the many of crystalline the samples that have been investigated and detailed discussion of measurements of superconductors and magnetoelastic coupling in iron-pnictide materials.

Preface to the 2018 Revision

This paper is a revised version of a review prepared in 2014 and disseminated in 2015 and 2016 (Baron 2016). The present version updates the references and revises some sections and generally tries to make the paper more readable and precise. Probably the largest changes are in the discussion of spectrometers, with now a more detailed comparison of spherical analyzers (SA) and post-sample collimation (PSC) optics (section “Comparison of 9.1 keV PSC and Spherical Analyzers”) and the discussion of magnetoelastic coupling, especially in the context of iron-pnictide superconductors (section “Iron-Pnictide Superconductors”).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A comprehensive treatment of many aspects of IXS, but not the meV-resolved work discussed here, can be found in Schülke (2007).

  2. 2.

    The magnitude of the momentum transfer is determined by the scattering angle, and the incident x-ray wavelength, and there is no coupling between energy transfer and momentum transfer so, different than a neutron triple axis spectrometer, scans at fixed Q are done without moving the sample or the two-theta arm.

  3. 3.

    Momentum transfer and energy transfer are completely decoupled with x-rays so, for IXS, scanning energy transfer at constant momentum transfer requires no motion of the sample or analyzers.

  4. 4.

    Scanning Q at a fixed energy transfer is possible, as are more sophisticated correlated scans, but can be dangerous, except in well-defined simple cases. This danger is because (1) IXS energy resolution is typically Lorentzian, with long tails, so that the intensity at a fixed energy can respond to changes in intensity of spectral features that are far away – thus it can be necessary to know the entire energy spectrum at a particular momentum transfer to properly interpret the intensity at one energy, and (2) dynamical spectra are generally complex, with many modes for materials with larger unit cells, so even in the absence of long tails, it can be important to know the local shape of the spectrum to evaluate intensity changes at a particular energy.

  5. 5.

    Note that this reference takes k=1/λ, dropping the factor of 2π that is commonly used today.

  6. 6.

    Sometimes the reflectivity is defined in terms of intensity per unit area, and this will lead to an additional factor of |b| in Eq. (3).

  7. 7.

    Carefully speaking, exact backscattering is usually a multi-beam situation, with more than one Bragg reflection excited. The second equation in (4) should then be interpreted as an easy way to estimate the rocking curve shape, bandwidth, and peak reflectivity near to backscattering when multi-beam excitations have been avoided.

  8. 8.

    For a symmetric reflection, b=−1, for any plane wave, the angle of incidence will be the same as the angle of reflection, with the Bragg reflection only reducing the intensity.

  9. 9.

    Note that sometimes the extinction length is just taken as the value at η = 0 which will lead to replacing the factor of 2 by π in Eq. (9).

  10. 10.

    Beam from an undulator usually has a complex frequency spectrum with several peaks and is called “pink” to distinguish it from the broader “white” beam (without narrow peaks) that is provided by wigglers or bending magnets.

  11. 11.

    Reducing temperature increases both reflectivity and the bandwidth. However, there can be a net gain in reflectivity/bandwidth.

  12. 12.

    This thickness is needed to preserve good resolution. See Said et al. (2011).

  13. 13.

    For thinner (<∼0.5 mm thick) analyzers, one can do the “dicing” using reactive ion etching, but this is not possible for thicker where severe aspect ratios ( 50:1) are needed to keep the grove width small (Finkelstein 2005).

  14. 14.

    The same restriction exists also for INS, but, often, exemplary plots of the Q-E plane are shown for low-dimensional samples – so the limit is not always obvious. Meanwhile, the new chopper spectrometers can also rotate the sample and do post-selection to choose only those events in a high-symmetry plane.

  15. 15.

    The NSLS-II PSC setup has achieved 1.3 meV resolution(FWHM) but in fact is now aiming at 2 meV resolution to help improve rates (Private communications from Y.Q. Cai)

  16. 16.

    Here we will use “BCS” to refer to the original discussion (Bardeen et al. 1957) where phonons were introduced in a weak-coupling limit without an explicit relation between the coupling and the detailed phonon spectra, while Eliashberg theory (Eliashberg 1960) allowed a direct relation based on application of Migdal’s approximation (Migdal 1958) ignoring vertex corrections – effectively assuming interesting electronic states have energies are much larger than phonon energies.

  17. 17.

    We use tetragonal notation where the [100] direction in real space is along the Cu-O bond and the [001] direction is normal to the Cu-O plane. For the moment, and as is often done, we neglect differences between (100) and (010) though, for most materials, these are not completely equivalent.

Abbreviations

CDW:

Charge density wave

DAC:

Diamond anvil cell

DHO:

Damped harmonic oscillator

HRM:

High-resolution monochromator

IFC:

Interatomic force constant matrix

INS:

Inelastic neutron scattering

IUVS:

Inelastic ultraviolet spectroscopy

IXS:

Inelastic x-ray scattering (in the present paper: specifically meV-resolved nonresonant investigations)

NIS:

Nuclear inelastic scattering (also, sometimes, NRVS, or, occasionally, NRIXS, is used instead)

NRIXS:

Nonresonant inelastic x-ray scattering (generally with resolution on the 0.01–0.1 eV scale for electronic interactions)

NRS:

Nuclear resonant scattering

NRVS:

Nuclear resonant vibration spectroscopy (NIS is used in the present paper)

PSC:

Post sample collimation

RIXS:

Resonant inelastic x-ray scattering

SA:

Spherical analyzer

SIXS:

Soft (x-ray) inelastic x-ray scattering

TDS:

Thermal diffuse scattering

XAFS:

X-ray absorption fine structure

XPCS:

X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy

References

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to several scientists who kindly read and offered comments on preliminary versions of this paper including Sunil Sinha, Rolf Heid, Aleksandr Chumakov, Hiroshi Fukui, Kazuyoshi Yamada, and Yuri Shvyd’ko. I thank the scientists who kindly shared some of the details of the beamlines with me, including Ahmet Alatas, Ayman Said, Alexey Bosak, Claudio Masciovecchio, and Yong Cai. I also thank people for their useful relevant comments including F. Weber and M. Sutton. The paper is based on work carried out at SPring-8. I would like to express my deep appreciation to the many people in all parts of SPring-8 that I have had the pleasure of working with over the last two decades, as well as collaborators outside SPring-8. This work is based on experience gained during many proposals including 2001B 0203 0481 0482 0508 0575 3607, 2002A 0182 0279 0280 0520 0537 0559 0560 0561 0562 0627, 2002B 0151 0178 0179 0180 0243 0248 0249 0287 0382 0383 0529 0539 0565 0593 0594 0632 0668 0709, 2003A 0022 0081 0153 0175 0235 0284 0357 0555 0637 0638 0683 0716, 2003B 0019 0132 0206 0248 0359 0397 0574 0693 0743 0744 0745 0755 0766, 2004A 0322 0439 0510 0519 0577 0582 0590 0634, 2004B 0003 0070 0204 0343 0491 0597 0632 0635 0722 0730 0736 0752, 2005A 0039 0061 0146 0147 0148 0157 0330 0369 0428 0475 0567 0596 0616 0712 0751, 2005B 0082 0093 0124 0253 0266 0295 0346 0441 0443 0484 0603 0623 0650 0731 0736, 2006A 1023 1039 1057 1081 1181 1226 1242 1272 1273 1291 1345 1376 1379 1417 1430 1453 1467 1502, 2006B 1053 1082 1089 1146 1186 1204 1235 1259 1299 1311 1337 1352 1356 1405 1417, 2007A 1109 1118 1125 1125 1222 1234 1279 1281 1301 1374 1436 1441 1473 1505 1507 1523 1539 1561 1612 1647 1671, 2007B 1053 1062 1099 1114 1118 1197 1198 1215 1322 1328 1336 1343 1375 1444 1538 1614 1640 1662, 2008A 1058 1064 1125 1140 1204 1205 1394 1456 1491 1522 1568 1582 1584 1587 1588 1626, 2008B 1381 1403 1473 1178 1108 1326 1584 1240 1144 1169 1491 1634, 2009A 1054 1093 1146 1189 1203 1224 1274 1290 1299 1358 1379 1436 1451 1492 1506 1548, 2009B 1074 1114 1126 1150 1165 1286 1323 1423 1439 1548 1555 1584 1609 1619, 2010B 1108 1112 1177 1185 1206 1353 1354 1392 1410 1453 1497 15271538 1575 1579 1593, 2011A 1051 1075 1104 1117 1136 1154 1180 1256 1271 1300 1304 1366 1373 1452 1502, 2011B 1122 1213 1215 1314 1332 1336 1353 1388 1406 1408 1423 1425 1536 1590, 2012A 1102 1115 1122 1156 1219 1237 1243 1250 1255 1354 1362 1390 1406 1417 1452 1506 1583, 2012B 1080 1125 1159 1196 1226 1236 1277 1283 1343 1356 1358 1364 1439 1577 1596 1658 , 2014A 1026 1059 1076 1086 1089 1100 1106 1122 1131 1154 1207 1231 1235 1236 1240 1346 1368 1378 1385 1434 1678 1687 1884 2014B 1052 1066 1068 1130 1143 1159 1182 1222 1269 1271 1290 1365 1381 1465 1381 1465 1536 1545 1739 1760 1761 1175 1192.

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Correspondence to Alfred Q. R. Baron .

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Electronic Supplementary Materials

This paper (and its companion, Part II) has electronic supplementary (ESM). These are a selection of movies of various phonons, designed to complement the text. If you would do not have access to them and would like them, please contact the author. Specific movies include the following: (MP4 62 kb)

Movie of a longitudinal acoustic (LA) mode in MgB 2 near to Γ. The view is looking down the c-axis, small gray spheres are B atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice, while yellow spheres are represent Mg atoms (MP4 62 kb)

Movie of a transverse acoustic (TA) mode in MgB 2 near to Γ (see notes on Movie 1). Note the motion is transverse to the direction of correlation (MP4 62 kb)

Movie of a longitudinal optic (LO) mode in MgB 2 near to Γ (see notes on Movie 1). Note the out-of-phase (antiphase) motion of the atoms (MP4 51 kb)

Movie of a transverse optic (TO) mode in MgB 2 near to Γ (see notes on Movie 1). Note the out-of-phase (antiphase) motion of the atoms (MP4 65 kb)

Movie of the (low energy) LA mode near to Γ in CaAlSi. The view is perpendicular to the c-axis, with the plane of Ca atoms (white) alternating with the Al-Si planes (blue and red, respectively). Note all motions are in phase (MP4 43 kb)

Movie of the (high energy) LO mode near to Γ in CaAlSi. Same view and colors as for Movie 5. Note the antiphase motion of the adjacent Al and Si. (MP4 37 kb)

Movie of the low-energy mode near to zone boundary (0 0 0.5) in CaAlSi, which, by following the dispersion from Γ, is the acoustic mode. Same view and colors as for Movie 5. Note the antiphase motion of the adjacent Al and Si (MP4 31 kb)

Movie of the high-energy mode near to zone boundary (0 0 0.5) in CaAlSi, which, by following the dispersion from Γ, is the optic mode. Same view and colors as for Movie 5. Note the inphase motion of the adjacent Al and Si (MP4 26 kb)

Movie of the low-energy mode near to the anti-crossing at (0 0 0.21) in CaAlSi, which, by following the dispersion from Γ, is the acoustic mode. Same view and colors as for Movie 5. Note the polarization mixing (MP4 31 kb)

Movie of the high-energy mode near to the anti-crossing at (0 0 0.21) in CaAlSi, which, by following the dispersion from Γ, is the optic mode. Same view and colors as for Movie 5. Note the polarization mixing (MP4 35 kb)

Movie of a Fe-As optical mode in PrFeAsO. The lack of reflection symmetry about the Fe plane leads to elliptical atomic motions (MP4 20 kb)

Movie of one of the bond-stretching modes in YBa 2 Cu 3 O 7 near to Γ. Cu atoms are red, O white, Y yellow, Ba blue. The c-axis is vertical (MP4 48 kb)

Movie of one of the buckling modes in YBa 2 Cu 3 O 7 near to Γ. (See notes on Movie 12) (MP4 23 kb)

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Baron, A.Q.R. (2019). High-Resolution Inelastic X-Ray Scattering I: Context, Spectrometers, Samples, and Superconductors. In: Jaeschke, E., Khan, S., Schneider, J., Hastings, J. (eds) Synchrotron Light Sources and Free-Electron Lasers. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04507-8_41-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04507-8_41-2

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-04507-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-04507-8

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  1. Latest

    High-Resolution Inelastic X-Ray Scattering I: Context, Spectrometers, Samples, and Superconductors
    Published:
    29 April 2019

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04507-8_41-2

  2. Original

    High-Resolution Inelastic X-Ray Scattering I: Context, Spectrometers, Samples, and Superconductors
    Published:
    20 August 2015

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04507-8_41-1