Pressure-Tuned Spin and Charge Ordering in an Itinerant Antiferromagnet

Abstract

Elemental chromium orders antiferromagnetically near room temperature, but the ordering temperature can be driven to zero by applying large pressures. We combine diamond anvil cell and synchrotron x-ray diffraction techniques to measure directly the spin and charge order in the pure metal at the approach to its quantum critical point. Both spin and charge order are suppressed exponentially with pressure, well beyond the region where disorder cuts off such a simple evolution, and they maintain a harmonic scaling relationship over decades in scattering intensity. By comparing the development of the order parameter with that of the magnetic wavevector, it is possible to ascribe the destruction of antiferromagnetism to the growth in electron kinetic energy relative to the underlying magnetic exchange interaction.

References in corpus (6)

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• The break up of heavy electrons at a quantum critical point
• How do Fermi liquids get heavy and die?
• Quantum Criticality: competing ground states in low dimensions
• High Resolution Study of Magnetic Ordering at Absolute Zero
• The strongly enhanced magnetic excitations near the quantum critical point of Cr${}_{1-x}$V${}_x$ and why strong exchange enhancement need not imply heavy fermion behavior

Cited by in corpus (12)

• Structural and Magnetic Phase Diagram of CrAs and its Relationship with Pressure-induced Superconductivity
• Magnetic Pitch as a Tuning Fork for Superconductivity
• Chromium at High Pressures: Weak Coupling and Strong Fluctuations in an Itinerant Antiferromagnet
• Resolving magnetic frustration in a pyrochlore lattice
• Experimental consequences at high temperatures of quantum critical points
• Charge and Spin Density Waves observed through their spatial fluctuations by coherent and simultaneous X-ray diffraction
• Anisotropic physical properties and pressure dependent magnetic ordering of CrAuTe${}_4$
• Fermi Surface of Cr${}_{1-x}$V${}_x$ across the Quantum Critical Point
• Pressure Driven Fermi surface reconstruction of chromium
• Photometric study of single-shot energy-dispersive X-ray diffraction at a laser plasma facility
• Neutron diffraction in a model itinerant metal near a quantum critical point
• Pressure-induced Spin-Peierls to Incommensurate Charge-Density-Wave Transition in the Ground State of TiOCl