Anomalous electrons in a metallic kagome ferromagnet

Sandy Adhitia Ekahana, Y. Soh (), Anna Tamai, Daniel Gosálbez-Martínez, Mengyu Yao, Andrew Hunter, Wenhui Fan, Yihao Wang, Junbo Li, Armin Kleibert, C. A. F. Vaz, Junzhang Ma, Hyungjun Lee, Yimin Xiong, Oleg V. Yazyev, Felix Baumberger, Ming Shi and G. Aeppli
Additional contact information
Sandy Adhitia Ekahana: Paul Scherrer Institute
Y. Soh: Paul Scherrer Institute
Anna Tamai: University of Geneva
Daniel Gosálbez-Martínez: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
Mengyu Yao: Paul Scherrer Institute
Andrew Hunter: University of Geneva
Wenhui Fan: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Yihao Wang: High Magnetic Field Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
Junbo Li: High Magnetic Field Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
Armin Kleibert: Paul Scherrer Institute
C. A. F. Vaz: Paul Scherrer Institute
Junzhang Ma: Paul Scherrer Institute
Hyungjun Lee: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
Yimin Xiong: High Magnetic Field Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
Oleg V. Yazyev: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
Felix Baumberger: Paul Scherrer Institute
Ming Shi: Paul Scherrer Institute
G. Aeppli: Paul Scherrer Institute

Nature, 2024, vol. 627, issue 8002, 67-72

Abstract: Abstract Ordinary metals contain electron liquids within well-defined ‘Fermi’ surfaces at which the electrons behave as if they were non-interacting. In the absence of transitions to entirely new phases such as insulators or superconductors, interactions between electrons induce scattering that is quadratic in the deviation of the binding energy from the Fermi level. A long-standing puzzle is that certain materials do not fit this ‘Fermi liquid’ description. A common feature is strong interactions between electrons relative to their kinetic energies. One route to this regime is special lattices to reduce the electron kinetic energies. Twisted bilayer graphene1–4 is an example, and trihexagonal tiling lattices (triangular ‘kagome’), with all corner sites removed on a 2 × 2 superlattice, can also host narrow electron bands5 for which interaction effects would be enhanced. Here we describe spectroscopy revealing non-Fermi-liquid behaviour for the ferromagnetic kagome metal Fe3Sn2 (ref. 6). We discover three C3-symmetric electron pockets at the Brillouin zone centre, two of which are expected from density functional theory. The third and most sharply defined band emerges at low temperatures and binding energies by means of fractionalization of one of the other two, most likely on the account of enhanced electron–electron interactions owing to a flat band predicted to lie just above the Fermi level. Our discovery opens the topic of how such many-body physics involving flat bands7,8 could differ depending on whether they arise from lattice geometry or from strongly localized atomic orbitals9,10.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07085-w 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:627:y:2024:i:8002:d:10.1038_s41586-024-07085-w

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

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07085-w

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 ().