Negative muons as a probe of magnetic oxides

Muon research has almost exclusively utilised positive muons and they have proven to be an effective local probe of magnetism. However, negative muons offer some interesting advantages because the probe site is known: the negative muons stop close to the nucleus of each atom in the sample. The signals from different atoms can be distinguished because the lifetime depends on the atomic number. We propose a study of two prototypical magnetic oxides in which we will focus on the signals from the mu-O site. The planned experiments will support the technical developments on both the hardware and software side at ISIS which will be carried out in the long shutdown. This new development is centred around an ISIS Facility Studentship and this beam time will be an integral part of this project.