The recently discovered vanadium-based kagome metals AV3Sb5 (A~=~K,~Rb,~Cs) exhibit superconductivity at low-temperatures and charge density wave (CDW) order at high-temperatures. A prominent feature of the charge ordered state in this family is that it breaks time-reversal symmetry (TRSB), which is connected to the underlying topological nature of the band structure. In this work, a powerful combination of zero-field and high-field muon-spin rotation/relaxation is used to study the signatures of TRSB of the charge order in CsV3Sb5, as well as its anisotropic character. By tracking the temperature evolution of the in-plane and out-of-plane components of the muon-spin polarization, an enhancement of the internal field width sensed by the muon-spin ensemble was observed below TTRSB=TCDW≃95~K. Additional increase of the internal field width, accompanied by a change of the local field direction at the muon site from the ab-plane to the c-axis, was detected below T∗≃30~K. Remarkably, this two-step feature becomes well pronounced when a magnetic field of 8~T is applied along the crystallographic c−axis, thus indicating a field-induced enhancement of the electronic response at the CDW transition. These results point to a TRSB in CsV3Sb5 by charge order with an onset of ≃95~K, followed by an enhanced electronic response below ≃30~K. The observed two-step transition is discussed within the framework of different charge-order instabilities, which, in accordance with density functional theory calculations, are nearly degenerate in energy.
@article{arxiv.2203.12317,
title = {Charge order breaks time-reversal symmetry in CsV$_3$Sb$_5$},
author = {Rustem Khasanov and Debarchan Das and Ritu Gupta and Charles Mielke and Matthias Elender and Qiangwei Yin and Zhijun Tu and Chunsheng Gong and Hechang Lei and Ethan Ritz and Rafael M. Fernandes and Turan Birol and Zurab Guguchia and Hubertus Luetkens},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2203.12317},
year = {2023}
}