Yb-based heavy fermion compounds and field tuned quantum chemistry
- Iowa State Univ., Ames, IA (United States)
The motivation of this dissertation was to advance the study of Yb-based heavy fermion (HF) compounds especially ones related to quantum phase transitions. One of the topics of this work was the investigation of the interaction between the Kondo and crystalline electric field (CEF) energy scales in Yb-based HF systems by means of thermoelectric power (TEP) measurements. In these systems, the Kondo interaction and CEF excitations generally give rise to large anomalies such as maxima in ρ(T) and as minima in S(T). The TEP data were use to determine the evolution of Kondo and CEF energy scales upon varying transition metals for YbT2Zn20 (T = Fe, Ru, Os, Ir, Rh, and Co) compounds and applying magnetic fields for YbAgGe and YbPtBi. For YbT2Zn20 and YbPtBi, the Kondo and CEF energy scales could not be well separated in S(T), presumably because of small CEF level splittings. A similar effect was observed for the magnetic contribution to the resistivity. For YbAgGe, S(T) has been successfully applied to determine the Kondo and CEF energy scales due to the clear separation between the ground state and thermally excited CEF states. The Kondo temperature, TK, inferred from the local maximum in S(T), remains finite as magnetic field increases up to 140 kOe. In this dissertation we have examined the heavy quasi-particle behavior, found near the field tuned AFM quantum critical point (QCP), with YbAgGe and YbPtBi. Although the observed nFL behaviors in the vicinity of the QCP are different between YbAgGe and YbPtBi, the constructed H-T phase diagram including the two crossovers are similar. For both YbAgGe and YbPtBi, the details of the quantum criticality turn out to be complicated. We expect that YbPtBi will provide an additional example of field tuned quantum criticality, but clearly there are further experimental investigations left and more ideas needed to understand the basic physics of field-induced quantum criticality in Yb-based systems.
- Research Organization:
- Ames Lab., Ames, IA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-07CH11358
- OSTI ID:
- 985312
- Report Number(s):
- IS-T 2737; TRN: US1006200
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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