The transferred hyperfine interaction between nuclear and electron spins in an heavy fermion material depends on the hybridization between the f-electron orbitals and those surrounding a distant nucleus. In CeMIn5 (M=Rh, Ir, Co), both the hyperfine coupling to the two indium sites as well as the crystalline electric field at the Ce are strongly dependent on the transition metal. We measure a series of CeRh1−xIrxIn5 crystals and find that the hyperfine coupling reflects the orbital anisotropy of the ground state Ce 4f wavefunction. These findings provide direct proof that the localized to itinerant transition is dominated by hybridization out of the Ce-In plane in this system.
@article{arxiv.2010.08636,
title = {Hyperfine Couplings as a Probe of Orbital Anisotropy in Heavy Fermion Materials},
author = {P. Menegasso and J. C. Souza and I. Vinograd and Z. Wang and S. P. Edwards and P. G. Pagliuso and N. J. Curro and R. R. Urbano},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.08636},
year = {2021}
}