CMP seminar by Prof. Martin Eckstein

Floquet X-Ray Scattering as a Probe of Hidden Electronic Orders

Speaker

Prof. Martin Eckstein, Institut für Theoretische Physik, University of Hamburg

Abstract

Quantum materials can host unconventional electronic orders, such as bond and loop-current orders, that are difficult to detect because they produce only weak signatures in conventional charge probes. Here we explore whether periodic driving can be used to make such hidden correlations visible. We develop a theory of Floquet resonant X-ray scattering and show that drive-induced sidebands provide access to bond and current correlations that are largely invisible to conventional charge diffraction. For charge-ordered states on the Kagome lattice, different bond and loop-current orders produce characteristic polarization fingerprints, with their contributions tunable by the drive frequency. More broadly, this suggests viewing Floquet X-ray scattering as a form of field-dressed imaging, a concept that could also be extended to spatially resolved probes of artificial quantum systems.

Reference: Martin Eckstein and Eva Paprotzki, arXiv:2604.06496

Host: Jens Paaske