English

Quantum Griffiths singularity in the stoichiometric heavy-fermion system CeRh$_4$Al$_{15}$

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2024-03-12 v1 Materials Science

Abstract

We present a detailed investigation of the stoichiometric CeRh4_4Al15_{15} single crystal compound using the temperature dependence of the heat capacity [CPC_{\text{P}}(TT)], electrical resistivity [ρ\rho(TT)], magnetic susceptibility [χ\chi(TT)], and magnetization [MM(HH)] measurements for a magnetic field (HH) applied in the basal plane and along the cc-axis. The low temperature power-law behavior of CC/TT \propto χ\chi \propto T1+αT^{-1+\alpha}, the isotherm magnetization, MHαM \sim H^{\alpha} with the exponent α\alpha = 0.45 - 0.55, and the TT-linear resistivity Δρ\Delta \rho \sim TϵT^\epsilon with ϵ\epsilon \sim 1 are found to be consistent with the formation of quantum Griffiths singularities in the non-Fermi-liquid (NFL) regime. We further investigated the spin dynamics of a polycrystalline sample of CeRh4_4Al15_{15}, using zero-field (ZF) and longitudinal-field (LF) muon spin relaxation (μ\muSR) measurements. ZF-μ\muSR measurements do not reveal any sign of long-range magnetic ordering down to 70~mK. The electronic relaxation rate (λ\lambda) below 0.5~K increases rapidly and shows a thermal activation-like characteristic [TTlog(λ\lambda)\sim TT] over the entire measured temperature range between 70~mK to 4~K, indicating the presence of low energy spin fluctuations in CeRh4_4Al15_{15}. LF-μ\muSR measurements show a time-field (t/Hηt/H^{\eta}) scaling of the μ\muSR asymmetry indicating a quantum critical behavior of this compound. Furthermore, inelastic neutron scattering study on the polycrystalline sample reveals two crystal field excitations near 19 and 33~meV. These features collectively provide strong evidence of NFL behavior in CeRh4_4Al15_{15} due to the formation of Griffiths phase close to a TT \rightarrow 0~K quantum critical point.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2305.16110,
  title  = {Quantum Griffiths singularity in the stoichiometric heavy-fermion system CeRh$_4$Al$_{15}$},
  author = {Rajesh Tripathi and D. T. Adroja and Y. Muro and Shivani Sharma and P. K. Biswas and T. Namiki and T. Kuwai and T. Hiroto and A. M. Strydom and A. Sundaresan and S. Langridge},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2305.16110},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

12 pages, 5 figures