Quadrupole-Driven Non-Fermi Liquid and Magnetic-Field Induced Heavy Fermion States in a Non-Kramers Doublet System

Abstract

Orbital degrees of freedom in condensed matters could play important roles in forming a variety of exotic electronic states by interacting with conduction electrons. In 4f electron systems, because of strong intra-atomic spin-orbit coupling, an orbitally degenerate state inherently carries quadrupolar degrees of freedom. The present work has focussed on a purely quadrupole-active system PrIr2Zn20 showing superconductivity in the presence of an antiferroquadrupole order at TQ = 0.11 K. We observed non-Fermi liquid (NFL) behaviors emerging in the electrical resistivity and the 4f contribution to the specific heat, C_4f, in the paramagnetic state at T > TQ. Moreover, in magnetic fields below 6 T, all data set of the electrical resistivity and C_4f(T) are well scaled with characteristic temperatures T0's. This is the first observation of the NFL state in the nonmagnetic quadrupole-active system, whose origin is intrinsically different from that observed in the vicinity of the conventional quantum critical point. It implies possible formation of a quadrupole Kondo lattice resulting from hybridization between the quadrupoles and the conduction electrons. Below 0.13 K, the electrical resistivity and C_4f(T) exhibit anomalies as B approaches 5 T. This is the manifestation of a field-induced crossover toward a Fermi-liquid ground state in the quadrupole Kondo lattice.

8 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Fermi-liquid instabilities at magnetic quantum phase transitions
• Heavy Fermion Superconductivity in the Quadrupole Ordered State of PrV2Al20
• Hastatic Order in URu2Si2
• NMR relaxation and resistivity from rattling phonons in pyrochlore superconductors
• Resolution of Entropy $\ln \sqrt{2}$ by Ordering in Two-Channel Kondo Lattice
• Competition between Quadrupole and Magnetic Kondo Effects in Non-Kramers Doublet Systems

Cited by in corpus (12)

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• Hindered Quadrupole Order in PrMgNi4 with a Nonmagnetic Doublet Ground State
• Non-Fermi liquid behavior and quantum criticality in cubic heavy fermion systems with non-Kramers multipolar local moments
• Simultaneous collapse of antiferroquadrupolar order and superconductivity in PrIr${}_2$Zn${}_{20}$ by nonhydrostatic pressure
• Divergent Thermal Expansion and Grüneisen Ratio in a Quadrupolar Kondo Metal
• Thermal and field-induced transitions in ferroquadrupolar Kondo systems
• Inelastic neutron scattering study of crystalline electric field excitations in the caged compounds NdT2Zn20 (T = Co, Rh, and Ir)
• Anisotropy of the magnetic-field-induced phase pocket in the non-Kramers doublet system PrIr${}_2$Zn${}_{20}$
• Elemental Dilution Effect on the Elastic Response due to a Quadrupolar Kondo Effect of the Non-Kramers System Y${}_{1-x}$Pr${}_x$Ir${}_2$Zn${}_{20}$
• Probing magnetic-field-induced multipolar ordering through field-angle-resolved magnetostriction and thermal expansion in PrIr${}_2$Zn${}_{20}$
• L-point quadrupole order under magnetic field in cubic PrIr${}_2$Zn${}_{20}$
• Numerical Renormalization Group Study of Quadrupole Kondo Effect with the Crystal-field Excited State