English

Hidden Orbital Order in $URu_{2}Si_{2}$

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2009-11-07 v1

Abstract

When matter is cooled from high temperatures, collective instabilities develop amongst its constituent particles that lead to new kinds of order. An anomaly in the specific heat is a classic signature of this phenomenon. Usually the associated order is easily identified, but sometimes its nature remains elusive. The heavy fermion metal URu2Si2URu_2Si_2 is one such example, where the order responsible for the sharp specific heat anomaly at T0=17KT_0=17 K has remained unidentified despite more than seventeen years of effort. In URu2Si2URu_{2}Si_{2}, the coexistence of large electron-electron repulsion and antiferromagnetic fluctuations in URu2Si2URu_2Si_2 leads to an almost incompressible heavy electron fluid, where anisotropically paired quasiparticle states are energetically favored. In this paper we use these insights to develop a detailed proposal for the hidden order in URu2Si2URu_2Si_2. We show that incommensurate orbital antiferromagnetism, associated with circulating currents between the uranium ions, can account for the local fields and entropy loss observed at the 17K17 K transition; furthermore we make detailed predictions for neutron scattering measurements.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0205003,
  title  = {Hidden Orbital Order in $URu_{2}Si_{2}$},
  author = {P. Chandra and P. Coleman and J. A. Mydosh and V. Tripathi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0205003},
  year   = {2009}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-22T10:36:36.716Z