%0 Journal Article %K Perovskite %K Heavy metals %K Iridium compounds %K Strontium compounds %K X ray scattering %K Transition metals %K Spin-orbit couplings %K iridates %K X rays %K Heavy metal elements %K Magnon excitations %K Oxygen K-edge %K Resonant inelastic x-ray scattering %K RIXS %K Transition metal elements %A X Liu %A M.P.M Dean %A J F Liu %A S.G Chiuzbəian %A N Jaouen %A A Nicolaou %A W.G Yin %A C.R Serrao %A Ramamoorthy Ramesh %A H Ding %A J.P Hill %B Journal of Physics Condensed Matter %D 2015 %G eng %I Institute of Physics Publishing %R 10.1088/0953-8984/27/20/202202 %T Probing single magnon excitations in Sr2IrO4 using O K-edge resonant inelastic x-ray scattering %V 27 %X Resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) at the L-edge of transition metal elements is now commonly used to probe single magnon excitations. Here we show that single magnon excitations can also be measured with RIXS at the K-edge of the surrounding ligand atoms when the center heavy metal elements have strong spin-orbit coupling. This is demonstrated with oxygen K-edge RIXS experiments on the perovskite Sr2IrO4, where low energy peaks from single magnon excitations were observed. This new application of RIXS has excellent potential to be applied to a wide range of magnetic systems based on heavy elements, for which the L-edge RIXS energy resolution in the hard x-ray region is usually poor. © 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd.