Pristine Quantum Criticality in a Kondo Semimetal

Published

May 19, 2021

Author(s)

Wesley T. Fuhrman, Andrey Sidorenko, Jonathan Hanel, Hannes Winkler, Andrey Prokofiev, Jose Rodriguez Rivera, Yiming Qiu, Peter Blaha, Qimiao Si, Collin L. Broholm, Silke Paschen

Abstract

The observation of quantum criticality in diverse classes of strongly correlated electron systems has been instrumental in establishing ordering principles, discovering new phases, and identifying the relevant degrees of freedom and interactions. At focus so far have been insulators and metals. Semimetals, which are of great current interest as candidate phases with nontrivial topology, are much less explored in experiments. Here we study the Kondo semimetal CeRu₄Sn₆ by magnetic susceptibility, specific heat, and inelastic neutron scattering experiments. The power-law divergence of the magnetic Grunesien ratio reveals that, surprisingly, this compound is quantum critical without tuning. The dynamical energy over temperature scaling in the neutron response, seen throughout the Brillouin zone, as well as the temperature dependence of the static uniform susceptibility indicate that temperature is the only energy scale in the criticality. Such behavior, which has been associated with Kondo destruction quantum criticality in metallic systems, may well be generic in the semimetal setting.

Citation

Science Advances

Volume

7

Issue

21

Pub Type

Journals

Keywords

quantum criticality, Kondo semimetal, neutron scattering

Citation

Fuhrman, W. , Sidorenko, A. , Hanel, J. , Winkler, H. , Prokofiev, A. , Rodriguez, J. , Qiu, Y. , Blaha, P. , Si, Q. , Broholm, C. and Paschen, S. (2021), Pristine Quantum Criticality in a Kondo Semimetal, Science Advances (Accessed December 22, 2024)