Chiral fluctuations in MnSi above the Curie temperature -: art. no. 237204

Polarized neutrons are used to determine the antisymmetric part of the magnetic susceptibility in noncentrosymmetric MnSi. The paramagnetic fluctuations are found to be incommensurate with the chemical lattice and to have a chiral character. We argue that antisymmetric interactions must be taken into account to properly describe the critical dynamics in MnSi above T-C . The possibility of directly measuring the polarization dependent part of the dynamical susceptibility in a large class of compounds by polarized inelastic neutron scattering is outlined as it can yield evidence for antisymmetric interactions such as spin-orbit coupling in metals as well as in insulators.