English

A Local Quantum Phase Transition in YFe$_{2}$Al$_{10}$

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2018-08-29 v2

Abstract

A phase transition occurs when correlated regions of a new phase grow to span the system and the fluctuations within the correlated regions become long-lived. Here we present neutron scattering measurements showing that this conventional picture must be replaced by a new paradigm in \boldmathYFe2Al10\mathrm{YFe}_2\mathrm{Al}_{10}, a compound that forms naturally very close to a \boldmathT=0T=0 quantum phase transition. Fully quantum mechanical fluctuations of localized moments are found to diverge at low energies and temperatures, however the fluctuating moments are entirely without spatial correlations. Zero temperature order in \boldmathYFe2Al10\mathrm{YFe}_2\mathrm{Al}_{10} is achieved by a new and entirely local type of quantum phase transition that may originate with the creation of the moments themselves.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1712.04033,
  title  = {A Local Quantum Phase Transition in YFe$_{2}$Al$_{10}$},
  author = {W. J. Gannon and L. S Wu and I. A. Zaliznyak and W. Xu and A. M. Tsvelik and J. A. Rodriguez-Rivera and Y. Qiu and M. C. Aronson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1712.04033},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

24 pages, 11 figure, including supplemental material

R2 v1 2026-06-22T23:14:52.882Z