The 2018 EPS Condensed Matter Division Europhysics Prize is awarded to Lucio Braicovich and Giacomo Ghiringhelli for the development and scientific exploration of high-resolution Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering (RIXS). The discoveries made using RIXS have fundamentally changed the discourse on the electronic structure of the cuprates. Notably, Braicovich and Ghiringhelli and their collaborators showed that dispersive high-energy spin excitations persist well into the cuprates’ overdoped regime. The greatly enhanced sensitivity of the SAXES spectrometer was crucial in the discovery of a charge density wave (CDW) phase in moderately doped cuprates. More info at Europhysics-prize
