Kondo breakdown in the cubic heavy fermion compound Ce3Pd20Si6

S. Paschen*

Institute of Solid State Physics, Vienna University of Technology, Austria


    Heavy fermion compounds are at the forefront of research on quantum criticality. In recent years efforts are being made to classify the different kinds of quantum critical behavior experimentally observed, to test the extent to which heavy fermion quantum criticality is universal. We have identified a cubic heavy fermion material, Ce3Pd20Si6, as exhibiting a field-induced quantum critical point (QCP) as the lower of two consecutive phase transitions is suppressed to zero. It is accompanied by an abrupt change of Fermi surface [1], reminiscent of what happens across the field-induced antiferromagnetic to paramagnetic transition in tetragonal YbRh2Si2 [2]. In Ce3Pd20Si6, the QCP separates two different ordered phases. In fact, a Kondo breakdown QCP [3] has been theoretically predicted to exist in the ordered portion of a global phase diagram for quantum critical heavy fermion compounds [4]. We conclude that dimensionality is an effective way to tune through such a global phase diagram and that the cubic material studied here is situated in the barely explored three-dimensional portion of this phase diagram.


*Work done in collaboration with J. Custers, J. Larrea J., K.- A. Lorenzer, M. Müller,  A. Prokofiev, A. Sidorenko, H. Winkler, A. M. Strydom, Y. Shimura, T. Sakakibara, R. Yu and Q. Si.

We acknowledge financial support from the European Research Council (ERC Advanced Grant No 227378).

[1] J. Custers, K.-A. Lorenzer, M. Müller, A. Prokofiev, A. Sidorenko, H. Winkler, A. M. Strydom, Y. Shimura, T. Sakakibara, R. Yu, Q. Si, and S. Paschen, Nature Materials 11, 189 (2012).

[2] S. Paschen et al., Nature 432, 881 (2004). S. Friedemann et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 107, 14547 (2010).

[3] Q. Si et al. Nature 413, 804 (2001). P. Coleman et al., J. Phys. Condens. Matter 13, R723 (2001). T. Senthil et al., Phys. Rev. B 69, 035111 (2004).

[4] Q. Si,  Physica B 378-380, 23 (2006). Q. Si, Phys. Status Solidi B 247, 476 (2010).

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