Devil's staircase transition of the electronic structures in CeSb
Devil's staircase transition of the electronic structures in CeSb
复制标题
DOI：
10.1038/s41467-020-16707-6
复制
发表时间：
2020-06-08
影响因子：
16.6
通讯作者：
Kondo, Takeshi
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Kuroda, Kenta;Arai, Y.;Kondo, Takeshi
具有竞争相互作用的固体通常经历复杂的相变和各种长周期调制。在这种转变中，魔鬼阶梯是最复杂的现象，而对于它来说，CeSb是最著名的材料，其中许多具有长周期磁结构的不同相依次出现在尼尔温度以下。通过魔鬼阶梯的低能电子结构的演变是特别有趣的，然而，尽管经过40年的紧张研究，迄今为止仍然难以捉摸。在这里，我们使用体敏感角分辨光发射光谱揭示了电子结构的魔鬼阶梯跃迁。磁重构极大地改变了每次跃迁时的能带色散。此外，我们还发现，在过渡相的长周期调制下，明确定义的能带图在费米能量附近大量坍缩，而在过渡到最低温度基态时又恢复。我们的数据为魔鬼阶梯期间发生的电子结构和光谱功能的重大重组提供了第一个直接证据。铯b经历了极长周期的磁有序4f态调制的魔鬼阶梯序列。在这里，作者想象了魔鬼阶梯排序如何影响移动电子，并在费米能量下破坏定义良好的能带图。
Solids with competing interactions often undergo complex phase transitions with a variety of long-periodic modulations. Among such transition, devil's staircase is the most complex phenomenon, and for it, CeSb is the most famous material, where a number of the distinct phases with long-periodic magnetostructures sequentially appear below the Neel temperature. An evolution of the low-energy electronic structure going through the devil's staircase is of special interest, which has, however, been elusive so far despite 40 years of intense research. Here, we use bulk-sensitive angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and reveal the devil's staircase transition of the electronic structures. The magnetic reconstruction dramatically alters the band dispersions at each transition. Moreover, we find that the well-defined band picture largely collapses around the Fermi energy under the long-periodic modulation of the transitional phase, while it recovers at the transition into the lowest-temperature ground state. Our data provide the first direct evidence for a significant reorganization of the electronic structures and spectral functions occurring during the devil's staircase. CeSb undergoes a devil's staircase sequence of extremely long-period modulations of the magnetically ordered 4f states. Here, the authors visualize how the devil's staircase ordering impacts mobile electrons and collapses the well-defined band picture at the Fermi energy.