Many-body physics-induced selection rules: application to Raman spectroscopy

Spectroscopic measurements in quantum systems are subject to selection rules, usually based on space-time symmetries, that allow or disallow transitions between states. In many-body systems, in addition to the single-particle states, there emerge new ones due to collective excitations of the system. Here we demonstrate the existence of a “fragile” selection rule that emerges as a manifestation of many-body effects and outlines the conditions for collective excitations to couple to a given spectroscopic probe beyond the usual symmetry considerations. As an example, we apply the rule to Raman spectroscopy of multiband superconductors and settle some unresolved features in experiments.