Collinear, incommensurate antiferromagnetism in van der Waals magnet alpha-UTe3

H. Sakai; C. Tabata; K. Kaneko; Y. Tokiwa; T. Kitazawa; S. Kambe; Y. Tokunaga; Y. Haga

Collinear, incommensurate antiferromagnetism in van der Waals magnet alpha-UTe3

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2025-10-14 v1

Authors: H. Sakai , C. Tabata , K. Kaneko , Y. Tokiwa , T. Kitazawa , S. Kambe , Y. Tokunaga , Y. Haga

Abstract

alpha-UTe3, a van der Waals (vdW) actinide compound with a monoclinic ZrSe3-type structure, is a narrow-gap semiconductor with 5f moments. 125Te NMR reveals strongly anisotropic, layer-confined spin fluctuations below about 20 K, with the a-axis component enhanced, and a signal wipeout at the antiferromagnetic (AFM) transition at TN = 5 K. Single-crystal neutron diffraction finds q approx. (0.17, 0.5, 0) and a longitudinal sinusoidal modulation of a-axis moments (amplitude about 0.8 muB) with AFM stacking along b. A CEF singlet-singlet induced-moment framework accounts for the easy-axis anisotropy, the small heat-capacity anomaly at TN, the reduced ordered moment, and the exchange-driven selection of q in this localized 5f vdW magnet, establishing a constrained exchange geometry stabilizing this in-plane incommensurate state.

Keywords

antiferromagnetism van der Waals magnet alpha-UTe3 incommensurate 5f moments

Cite

@article{arxiv.2510.10999,
  title  = {Collinear, incommensurate antiferromagnetism in van der Waals magnet alpha-UTe3},
  author = {H. Sakai and C. Tabata and K. Kaneko and Y. Tokiwa and T. Kitazawa and S. Kambe and Y. Tokunaga and Y. Haga},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.10999},
  year   = {2025}
}

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8 pages, 7 figures

Collinear, incommensurate antiferromagnetism in van der Waals magnet alpha-UTe3

Abstract

Keywords

Cite

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