Lu Yi, Haverkort Maurits W
Max-Planck-Institut für Festkörperforschung, Heisenbergstrasse 1, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany.
Institut für Theoretische Physik, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Philosophenweg 19, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany.
Phys Rev Lett. 2017 Dec 22;119(25):256401. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.256401. Epub 2017 Dec 18.
We present a nonperturbative, divergence-free series expansion of Green's functions using effective operators. The method is especially suited for computing correlators of complex operators as a series of correlation functions of simpler forms. We apply the method to study low-energy excitations in resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) in doped one- and two-dimensional single-band Hubbard models. The RIXS operator is expanded into polynomials of spin, density, and current operators weighted by fundamental x-ray spectral functions. These operators couple to different polarization channels resulting in simple selection rules. The incident photon energy dependent coefficients help to pinpoint main RIXS contributions from different degrees of freedom. We show in particular that, with parameters pertaining to cuprate superconductors, local spin excitation dominates the RIXS spectral weight over a wide doping range in the cross-polarization channel.