Theory of circular dichroism in resonant inelastic x-ray scattering

Abstract

We analyze circular dichroism (CD) in resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) in magnetic materials. We define RIXS-CD as the difference between scattering amplitudes for the right- and left-circularly polarized incoming photons and unpolarized (total) outgoing photons. We employ the impurity approximation, in which the interference between scattering events on different atoms is neglected. We perform the symmetry analysis of several common antiferromagnetic and altermagnetic structures and outline the general approach. The analysis is supported by numerical calculations using atomic model with realistic crystal fields obtained from first principles. We show that RIXS-CD is distinguished from first-order spectroscopies such as x-ray magnetic circular dichroism by insensitivity to the time-reversal symmetry breaking. As a result we find that RIXS-CD is present in the normal (disordered) state of materials with lower symmetry. In antiferromagnets the RIXS-CD is invariant under N\'eel vector reversal. In altermagnets and ferromagnets the RIXS-CD spectra for time-reversed states are, in general, independent except for the special case when there is a unitary symmetry of the Hamiltonian connecting the