21. 4. 2021

Ekaterina M. Pärschke (IST Austria):
Magnetic interactions, charge excitations, and strong correlations in iridates under strain and pressure


Abstrakt:

Iridates are a family of Mott insulators displaying peculiar competition of
fundamental interactions: electron-electron correlations, spin-orbit coupling
(SOC), and spin-lattice coupling. Moreover, understanding the physics of
iridates is expected to shed light on mechanisms of high-temperature
superconductivity.

After introducing this interesting family of strongly correlated materials,
I will present our recent theoretical advances in understanding charge and
magnetic excitations in iridates, comparing theory to recent Photoemission
Spectroscopy (ARPES), Resonant Inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS), and
two-magnon Raman scattering data. I will also discuss how the structural and
physical properties of iridates can be manipulated by applying external
pressure and strain. In iridates, SOC mediates unusual almost rigid locking of
the magnetic momenta to the lattice through the orbital momenta, providing a
new route to control structural and physical properties. Competition between
orbital and spin angular momenta of light at the antiferromagnetic resonances
and Landau level transitions.