Plasma discharge lamps are widely utilized in the practice of angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) experiments as narrow-linewidth ultraviolet photon sources. However, many emission lines such as Ar-I, Ne-I, and Ne-II have closely spaced doublet emission lines, which result in superimposed replica on the measured ARPES spectra. Here, we present a simple method for subtracting the contribution of these doublet emission lines from photoemission spectra.

A hallmark of many unconventional superconductors is the presence of many-body interactions that give rise to broken-symmetry states intertwined with superconductivity. Recent resonant soft X-ray scattering experiments report commensurate 3a 0 charge density wave order in infinite-layer nickelates, which has important implications regarding the universal interplay between charge order and superconductivity in both cuprates and nickelates.

Alkali antimonide semiconductor photocathodes provide a promising platform for the generation of high-brightness electron beams, which are necessary for the development of cutting-edge probes, including x-ray free electron lasers and ultrafast electron diffraction. Nonetheless, to harness the intrinsic brightness limits in these compounds, extrinsic degrading factors, including surface roughness and contamination, must be overcome.

Despite significant achievements in characterizing the properties of Sr2RuO4 over the last three decades, the precise nature of its electronic ground state is still unresolved. In this work, we provide a missing piece of the puzzle by uncovering evidence of electronic nematic order in the normal state of Sr2RuO4, revealed by ultrafast time-resolved optical dichroism measurements of uniaxially strained thin films. This nematic order, whose domains are aligned by the strain, spontaneously breaks the fourfold rotational symmetry of the crystal.

We report a resonant inelastic x-ray scattering investigation of ultrathin epitaxial films of Ba2IrO4, and compare their low-energy magnetic and spin-orbit excitations to those of their sister compound Sr2IrO4. Due to the 180∘ Ir-O-Ir bond, the bandwidth of the magnon and spin orbiton is significantly larger in Ba2IrO4, making it difficult to describe these two types of excitations as separate well-defined quasiparticles. Both types of excitations are found to be quite sensitive to the effect of epitaxial strain.

In its ground state, RuO2 was long thought to be an ordinary metallic paramagnet. Recent neutron and x-ray diffraction revealed that bulk RuO2 is an antiferromagnet with TN above 300 K. Furthermore, epitaxial strain induces superconductivity in thin films of RuO2 below 2 K. Here, we present a resonant elastic x-ray scattering study at the RuL2 edge of the strained RuO2 films exhibiting the strain-induced superconductivity. We observe an azimuthal modulation of the 100 Bragg peak consistent with bulk.

Functional properties of transition-metal oxides strongly depend on crystallographic defects; crystallographic lattice deviations can affect ionic diffusion and adsorbate binding energies. Scanning x-ray nanodiffraction enables imaging of local structural distortions across an extended spatial region of thin samples. Yet, localized lattice distortions remain challenging to detect and localize using nanodiffraction, due to their weak diffuse scattering.

Utilizing the powerful combination of molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), we produce and study the effect of different terminating layers on the electronic structure of the metallic delafossite PdCoO2. Attempts to introduce unpaired electrons and synthesize new antiferromagnetic metals akin to the isostructural compound PdCrO2 have been made by replacing cobalt with iron in PdCoO2 films grown by MBE. Using ARPES, we observe similar bulk bands in these PdCoO2 films with Pd-, CoO2-, and FeO2-termination.

The unconventional superconductivity in Sr2RuO4 is infamously susceptible to suppression by small levels of disorder such that it has been most commonly studied in extremely high-purity bulk crystals. Here, we harness local structural and spectroscopic scanning transmission electron microscopy measurements in epitaxial thin films of Sr2RuO4 to disentangle the impact of different types of crystalline disorder on superconductivity.

Molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) is the gold standard for the epitaxial growth of complex oxides with the best material properties as determined by respective figures of merit. Unfortunately, once more than one cation is involved in the material desired, MBE growth often becomes plagued by difficulties in stoichiometry control.