Crystal field and low energy excitations measured by high resolution RIXS at the L-3 edge of Cu, Ni and Mn

Resonant inelastic x-ray scattering in the soft x-ray regime has been profiting much from technical advances that have lowered considerably the instrumental linewidth. At the ADRESS beam line of the Swiss Light Source the SAXES spectrometer can be used to measure RIXS spectra at the L edges of the 3d transition metals with unprecedented energy resolution, of the order of 100meV for Mn, Ni and Cu. We present here some preliminary spectra on CuO, malachite, NiO, NiCl2, MnO and LaMnO3. The dd excitations are very well resolved allowing accurate experimental evaluation of 3d state energy splitting. The low energy scale becomes accessible opening the way to the study of collective excitations in strongly correlated electron systems, like magnons and orbitons.