Onset of antiferromagnetism in heavy-fermion metals

A. Schröder, G. Aeppli, R. Coldea, M. Adams, O. Stockert, H.v. Löhneysen, E. Bucher, R. Ramazashvili and P. Coleman ()
Additional contact information
A. Schröder: Physikalisches Institut, Universität Karlsruhe
G. Aeppli: NEC
R. Coldea: Oak Ridge National Laboratory
M. Adams: ISIS Facility, CCLRC, Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory
O. Stockert: Physikalisches Institut, Universität Karlsruhe
H.v. Löhneysen: Physikalisches Institut, Universität Karlsruhe
E. Bucher: University of Konstanz
R. Ramazashvili: University of Illinois
P. Coleman: Center for Materials Theory, Rutgers University

Nature, 2000, vol. 407, issue 6802, 351-355

Abstract: Abstract There are two main theoretical descriptions of antiferromagnets. The first arises from atomic physics, which predicts that atoms with unpaired electrons develop magnetic moments. In a solid, the coupling between moments on nearby ions then yields antiferromagnetic order at low temperatures1. The second description, based on the physics of electron fluids or ‘Fermi liquids’, states that Coulomb interactions can drive the fluid to adopt a more stable configuration by developing a spin density wave2,3. It is at present unknown which view is appropriate at a ‘quantum critical point’, where the antiferromagnetic transition temperature vanishes4,5,6,7. Here we report neutron scattering and bulk magnetometry measurements of the metal CeCu6-xAux, which allow us to discriminate between the two models. We find evidence for an atomically local contribution to the magnetic correlations which develops at the critical gold concentration (xc = 0.1 ), corresponding to a magnetic ordering temperature of zero. This contribution implies that a Fermi-liquid-destroying spin-localizing transition, unanticipated from the spin density wave description, coincides with the antiferromagnetic quantum critical point.

Date: 2000
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/35030039 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:407:y:2000:i:6802:d:10.1038_35030039

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/35030039

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().