Kondo Reshapes Multiple Orders in a $5f$ van der Waals Material
Abstract
Electron interactions can drive magnetism, superconductivity, and topology. However, the realization of these phases remains limited in van der Waals materials, and the full landscape of strong correlations remains uncharted in any context. While interactions between conduction electrons and localized spins yield a well-known competition between heavy fermions (Kondo hybridization) and magnetic order (RKKY exchange), such spin-driven competition represents only part of the correlated electron phase diagram. Here we demonstrate that a heavy-fermion state can also compete with charge order, such as the charge density wave (CDW) state typical in the van der Waals rare-earth tritellurides (RTe). We exploit the spatially-extended orbitals of -UTe to enhance Kondo hybridization compared to its isostructural RTe cousins. Our scanning tunneling spectroscopy on -UTe shows Fano resonances characteristic of the heavy fermion state, while our quasiparticle interference imaging reveals the disappearance of Fermi-level nesting and the appearance of flat bands. We extend the tritelluride tight-binding model to include Kondo coupling and quantify the Fermi surface reconstruction. Consistent with the destruction of nesting, we observe no CDW in -UTe. Our expansion of the Kondo phase diagram beyond spin-mediated competition opens new possibilities for proximity-induced phase engineering in correlated van der Waals heterostructures.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2602.22451,
title = {Kondo Reshapes Multiple Orders in a $5f$ van der Waals Material},
author = {Gal Tuvia and Ruizhe Kang and Diana Golovanova and Yuqian Chen and Yidi Wang and Zeyu Ma and Mengke Liu and Carly Grossman and Suk Hyun Sung and Justin Shotton and Jiahui Zhu and David Martinez and Ismail El Baggari and Binghai Yan and Dirk K. Morr and Sheng Ran and Jennifer E. Hoffman},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.22451},
year = {2026}
}