Magnon softening and damping in the ferromagnetic manganites due to orbital correlations

We present a theory for spin excitations in ferromagnetic metallic manganites and demonstrate that orbital fluctuations have strong effects on the magnon dynamics in the case these compounds are close to a transition to an orbital ordered state. In particular we show that the scattering of the spin excitations by low-lying orbital modes with cubic symmetry causes both the magnon softening and damping observed experimentally.