Frustration and Order in Heavy Fermions on the Shastry-Sutherland Lattice

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****Technical Abstract****This award aims to explicate the process by which electrons that are initially localized on the f-orbitals of rare earth based heavy fermion compounds can be induced to join the itinerant states comprising the Fermi surface(FS), and the critical fluctuations of the electronic structure that accompany this electronic de-confinement transition. The role of frustration in suppressing magnetic order in heavy fermions that form on the geometrically frustrated Shastry-Sutherland lattice will be investigated. Two distinct ground states are envisaged: a spin liquid where the conduction electrons are decoupled from the fluctuating moments, whose electrons are consequently excluded from the FS, and a Fermi liquid, where a strong Kondo effect delocalizes the f-electrons, which are now incorporated in an expanded FS. These two non-ordered states are separated at T=0 by a purely electronic transition, driven by fluctuations between the large and small FS states. The synthesis of new materials to support both the measurement program of the PI and those of her collaborators is a central theme of this project. Participating undergraduate and graduate students will gain practical and portable experience in a variety of different synthesis and experimental techniques. This research makes extensive use of national research facilities, including neutron scattering centers at NIST and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. ****Non-Technical Abstract****While all materials are disordered at high temperatures, with no discernible patterns or correlations in their configurations, the onset of an ordered phase such as superconductivity or magnetism is overwhelmingly favored as the temperature is reduced. This project seeks to explicate the properties of systems with the most extreme form of order, which occurs exactly at a temperature of absolute zero. The quantum mechanical nature of such a phase transition is paramount, with the result that normal behaviors like the conduction of heat or electricity are drastically modified- even at nonzero temperatures. Here, geometrical constraints associate with a lattice of magnetic moments will be used to realize such T=0 transitions, and their properties will be studied using neutron scattering experiments carried out at NIST and at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The synthesis of new materials to support both the measurement program of the PI and those of her collaborators is a central theme of this project. Participating undergraduate and graduate students will gain practical and portable experience in a variety of different synthesis and experimental techniques.