Magnetic circular dichroism in soft X-ray resonant inelastic scattering

We discuss the application of resonant inelastic X-ray scattering to the study of magnetic systems in the soft X-ray range. To this end we distinguish two broad areas. In the first the layout of the experiment is such that the absorption magnetic circular dichroism (MCD) is not zero. In the second the magnetisation is perpendicular to the incident helical beam so that the absorption MCD is zero. In the first area we summarise published results on Fe-Co alloys and we present new data on Mn impurities in Ni together with calculations. In the second area we summarise published results on Ni in Ni-ferrite with final 3s shell excitation and we present new results on Co-metal and Co in Co-ferrite measured with a new approach. This is based on the incident energy dependence of the integral of the Raman spectrum in inner shell excitation (integrated resonant Raman scattering). The potentialities and the limitations of the above methods are critically presented.