Hastatic order in the heavy-fermion compound URu2Si2

Premala Chandra, Piers Coleman () and Rebecca Flint
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Premala Chandra: Center for Materials Theory, Rutgers University, 136 Frelinghuysen Road, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854-8019, USA
Piers Coleman: Center for Materials Theory, Rutgers University, 136 Frelinghuysen Road, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854-8019, USA
Rebecca Flint: Massachusetts Institute for Technology, Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139-4307, USA

Nature, 2013, vol. 493, issue 7434, 621-626

Abstract: Abstract The development of collective long-range order by means of phase transitions occurs by the spontaneous breaking of fundamental symmetries. Magnetism is a consequence of broken time-reversal symmetry, whereas superfluidity results from broken gauge invariance. The broken symmetry that develops below 17.5 kelvin in the heavy-fermion compound URu2Si2 has long eluded such identification. Here we show that the recent observation of Ising quasiparticles in URu2Si2 results from a spinor order parameter that breaks double time-reversal symmetry, mixing states of integer and half-integer spin. Such ‘hastatic’ order hybridizes uranium-atom conduction electrons with Ising 5f2 states to produce Ising quasiparticles; it accounts for the large entropy of condensation and the magnetic anomaly observed in torque magnetometry. Hastatic order predicts a tiny transverse moment in the conduction-electron ‘sea’, a colossal Ising anisotropy in the nonlinear susceptibility anomaly and a resonant, energy-dependent nematicity in the tunnelling density of states.

Date: 2013
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DOI: 10.1038/nature11820

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