2 research outputs found
Heavy holes: precursor to superconductivity in antiferromagnetic CeIn3
Numerous phenomenological parallels have been drawn between f- and d-
electron systems in an attempt to understand their display of unconventional
superconductivity. The microscopics of how electrons evolve from participation
in large moment antiferromagnetism to superconductivity in these systems,
however, remains a mystery. Knowing the origin of Cooper paired electrons in
momentum space is a crucial prerequisite for understanding the pairing
mechanism. Of especial interest are pressure-induced superconductors CeIn3 and
CeRhIn5 in which disparate magnetic and superconducting orders apparently
coexist - arising from within the same f-electron degrees of freedom. Here we
present ambient pressure quantum oscillation measurements on CeIn3 that
crucially identify the electronic structure - potentially similar to high
temperature superconductors. Heavy pockets of f-character are revealed in
CeIn3, undergoing an unexpected effective mass divergence well before the
antiferromagnetic critical field. We thus uncover the softening of a branch of
quasiparticle excitations located away from the traditional spin-fluctuation
dominated antiferromagnetic quantum critical point. The observed Fermi surface
of dispersive f-electrons in CeIn3 could potentially explain the emergence of
Cooper pairs from within a strong moment antiferromagnet.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
A de Haas-van Alphen study of the filled skutterudite compounds PrOsAs and LaOsAs
Comprehensive magnetic-field-orientation dependent studies of the
susceptibility and de Haas-van Alphen effect have been carried out on single
crystals of the filled skutterudites PrOsAs and LaOsAs
using magnetic fields of up to 40~T. Several peaks are observed in the
low-field susceptibility of PrOsAs, corresponding to cascades of
metamagnetic transitions separating the low-field antiferromagnetic and
high-field paramagnetic metal (PMM) phases. The de Haas-van Alphen experiments
show that the Fermi-surface topologies of PrOsAs in its PMM phase
and LaOsAs are very similar. In addition, they are in reasonable
agreement with the predictions of bandstructure calculations for
LaOsAs on the PrOsAs lattice. Both observations suggest
that the Pr 4 electrons contribute little to the number of itinerant
quasiparticles in the PMM phase. However, whilst the properties of
LaOsAs suggest a conventional nonmagnetic Fermi liquid, the effects
of direct exchange and electron correlations are detected in the PMM phase of
PrOsAs. For example, the quasiparticle effective masses in
PrOsAs are found to decrease with increasing field, probably
reflecting the gradual suppression of magnetic fluctuations associated with
proximity to the low-temperature, low-field antiferromagnetic state