Nonlinear Sigma Model Analysis of the AFM Phase Transition of the Kondo Lattice.pdfVIP

Nonlinear Sigma Model Analysis of the AFM Phase Transition of the Kondo Lattice T. Tzen Ong1,2 and B. A. Jones2 1Department of Applied Physics, Stanford University, Stanford CA 94305, USA 2IBM Research Division, Almaden Research Center, San Jose, CA 95120, USA (Dated: August 27, 2008) We have studied the antiferromagnetic quantum phase transition of a 2D Kondo-Heisenberg square lattice using the non-linear sigma model. A renormalization group analysis of the competing Kondo – RKKY interaction was carried out to 1-loop order in the ǫ expansion, and a new quantum critical 8 point is found, dominated by Kondo fluctuations. In addition, the spin-wave velocity scales loga- 0 rithmically near the new QCP, i.e breakdown of hydrodynamic behavior. The results allow us to 0 propose a new phase diagram near the AFM fixed point of this 2D Kondo lattice model. 2 PACS numbers: g u A The physics of heavy-fermion metals, systems that approach. We assume that the AFM state has a small contain both localized f-electrons and conduction elec- Fermi surface, with no“hot-spots” spanned by the Neel 7 2 tron bands, has been of great interest in the strongly- vector (π, π), as shown in Fig. 1. To study the AFM correlated community for several decades. Initial work ] by Doniach [1] pointed out the competition between the l e Kondo (JK ) and the RKKY (JH ) interaction, and the - r quantum critical point (QCP) associated with the tran- t