  Although orbital degrees of freedom are a factor of fundamental importance in
strongly correlated transition metal compounds, orbital correlations and
dynamics remain very difficult to access, in particular by neutron scattering.
Via a direct calculation of scattering amplitudes we show that instead magnetic
resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) does reveal orbital correlations. In
contrast to neutron scattering, the intensity of the magnetic excitations in
RIXS depends very sensitively on both the symmetry of the orbitals that spins
occupy, and on photon polarizations. We show in detail how this effect allows
magnetic RIXS to distinguish between alternating orbital ordered and
ferro-orbital (or orbital liquid) states.
