Evidence for Incommensurate Spin Fluctuations in Sr₂RuO₄

We report inelastic neutron scattering measurements in the normal state of Sr₂RuO₄ that reveal the existence of significant incommensurate magnetic spin fluctuations located at q₀ = (±0.6π/a,±0.6π/a,0). This finding confirms recent band-structure calculations that have predicted incommensurate magnetic responses related to dynamical nesting properties of its Fermi surface and points towards the possibility of a competition between p-wave spin triplet and d-wave spin singlet superconductivity in Sr₂RuO₄. We present a comparison between low energy spin fluctuations, converted in absolute units, from inelastic neutron scattering measurements and previous nuclear magnetic resonance studies.