Magnetic Excitation in Totally Symmetric Staggered Ordered Phase of PrFe4P12

作者：Iwasa Kazuaki^*; Hao Lijie; Kohgi Masahumi; Kuwahara Keitaro; Mignot Jean Michel; Sugawara Hitoshi; Aoki Yuji; Matsuda Tatsuma D; Sato Hideyuki

来源：Journal of the Physical Society of Japan, 2012, 81(9): 094711.

DOI：10.1143/JPSJ.81.094711

• heavy electron
• Kondo effect
• crystal-field splitting
• magnetic excitation
• rare-earth-filled skutterudite
• neutron scattering

We report inelastic neutron scattering results for single-crystalline samples of PrFe4P12, which undergoes a transition from the heavy-electron phase to the antiferro-type nonmagnetic ordered phase. In contrast to the quasielastic magnetic response observed in the heavy electron phase, the well-defined inelastic peaks located at 1.5 and 3 meV are superimposed in the ordered phase. The maximum spectral intensity appears at the Brillouin zone center for the original Im (3) over bar structure, and the minimum spectral intensity appears at the zone boundaries including the ordering vector q(0) = (1, 0, 0). The evolution of the 1.5 meV peak with an applied magnetic field in the ordered phase is in agreement with excitations between 4f-electron crystalline-field-splitting levels, while the 3 meV peak is smeared out rapidly. The spectra are consistent with the recently proposed staggered ordering of a Pr site with well-localized f-electrons and that with a Kondo-singlet-like state, which are represented as the totally symmetric state accompanied by the charge modulation of carriers.

• 出版日期2012-9
• 单位中国地震局; 中国原子能科学研究院