Tunable Emergent Heterostructures in a Prototypical Correlated Metal

Abstract

At the interface between two distinct materials desirable properties, such as superconductivity, can be greatly enhanced, or entirely new functionalities may emerge. Similar to in artificially engineered heterostructures, clean functional interfaces alternatively exist in electronically textured bulk materials. Electronic textures emerge spontaneously due to competing atomic-scale interactions, the control of which, would enable a top-down approach for designing tunable intrinsic heterostructures. This is particularly attractive for correlated electron materials, where spontaneous heterostructures strongly affect the interplay between charge and spin degrees of freedom. Here we report high-resolution neutron spectroscopy on the prototypical strongly-correlated metal CeRhIn5, revealing competition between magnetic frustration and easy-axis anisotropy -- a well-established mechanism for generating spontaneous superstructures. Because the observed easy-axis anisotropy is field-induced and anomalously large, it can be controlled efficiently with small magnetic fields. The resulting field-controlled magnetic superstructure is closely tied to the formation of superconducting and electronic nematic textures in CeRhIn5, suggesting that in-situ tunable heterostructures can be realized in correlated electron materials.

References in corpus (14)

• Superconductivity in single-layer films of FeSe with a transition temperature above 100 K
• Hidden Magnetism and Quantum Criticality in the Heavy Fermion Superconductor CeRhIn5
• Formation of a Nematic Fluid at High Fields in Sr3Ru2O7
• Orbital-driven nematicity in FeSe
• Effect of magnetic frustration on nematicity and superconductivity in Fe chalcogenides
• Markov Chain Monte Carlo Method without Detailed Balance
• Electronic in-plane symmetry breaking at field-tuned quantum criticality in CeRhIn5
• Fermi surface reconstruction and multiple quantum phase transitions in the antiferromagnet CeRhIn${}_5$
• Quantum-Matter Heterostructures
• Short-range incommensurate magnetic order near the superconducting phase boundary in Fe(1+d)Te(1-x)Se(x)
• Field induced density wave in the heavy fermion compound CeRhIn5
• The magnitude of the magnetic exchange interaction in the heavy fermion antiferromagnet CeRhIn${}_5$
• Crossover from commensurate to incommensurate antiferromagnetism in stoichiometric NaFeAs revealed by single-crystal 23Na,75As-NMR experiments
• Low temperature magnetic structure of CeRhIn${}_5$ by neutron diffraction on absorption-optimized samples

Cited by in corpus (12)

• Non-monotonic pressure dependence of high-field nematicity and magnetism in CeRhIn${}_5$
• Enhanced hybridization sets the stage for electronic nematicity in CeRhIn5
• Nature of the spin resonance mode in CeCoIn${}_5$
• Multipole polaron in the devil's staircase of CeSb
• Single domain stripe order in a high-temperature superconductor
• Orbitally defined field-induced electronic state in a Kondo lattice
• Specific heat of CeRhIn${}_5$ in high magnetic fields: Magnetic phase diagram revisited
• Kondo quasiparticle dynamics observed by resonant inelastic x-ray scattering
• Origin of the 30 T transition in CeRhIn${}_5$ in tilted magnetic fields
• Robust Fermi-Surface Morphology of CeRhIn${}_5$ across the Putative Field-Induced Quantum Critical Point
• Anisotropic excitonic magnetism from discrete ${\mathrm{C}}_4$ symmetry in CeRhIn${}_5$
• Exotic magnetic phase diagram and extremely robust antiferromagnetism in Ce${}_2$RhIn${}_8$