Magnetic excitations in the square-lattice iridate Ba 2 IrO 4
Here, we report a resonant inelastic x-ray scattering investigation of ultrathin epitaxial films of Ba 2 IrO 4 , and compare their low-energy magnetic and spin-orbit excitations to those of their sister compound Sr 2 IrO 4 . Due to the 180° Ir-O-Ir bond, the bandwidth of the magnon and spin orbiton is significantly larger in Ba 2 IrO 4 , 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 addition, we find that the f-level inversion observed in Sr 2 IrO 4 is absent in Ba 2 IrO 4 , as predicted in recent theoretical studies. Our results illustrate that the magnetic properties of Ba 2 IrO 4 are substantially different from those of Sr 2 IrO 4 , suggesting that these materials need to be examined more carefully with electron itinerancy taken into account.