High pressure transport study of non-Fermi liquid behaviour in U2Pt2In and U3Ni3Sn4.pdf

pphmf-devisser.doc submitted to World Scientific 10/29/01 : 12:25 PM 1/6 HIGH PRESSURE TRANSPORT STUDY OF NON-FERMI LIQUID BEHAVIOUR IN U2Pt2In AND U3Ni3Sn4 ANNE DE VISSER AND PEDRO ESTRELA Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute, University of Amsterdam, Valckenierstraat 65, 1018 XE Amsterdam, The Netherlands E-mail: devisser@science.uva.nl TAKASHI NAKA National Research Institute for Metals, 1-2-1 Sengen, Ibaraki 305-0047, Japan E-mail: naka@nrim.go.jp The strongly correlated metals U2Pt2In and U3Ni3Sn4 show pronounced non-Fermi liquid (NFL) phenomena at ambient pressure. Here we review single-crystal electrical resistivity measurements under pressure (p ≤ 1.8 GPa) conducted to investigate the stability of the NFL phase. For tetragonal U2Pt2In (I || a) we observe a rapid recovery of the Fermi-liquid T 2-term with pressure. The Fermi-liquid temperature varies as TFL ~ p-pc, where pc= 0 is a critical pressure. The analysis within the magnetotransport theory of Rosch provides evidence for the location of U2Pt2In at a p= 0 antiferromagnetic quantum critical point (QCP). In the case of cubic U3Ni3Sn4 we find TFL ~ (p-pc)1/2. The analysis provides evidence for an antiferromagnetic QCP in U3Ni3Sn4 at a negative pressure pc= –0.04±0.04 GPa. 1 Introduction Materials with low-temperature properties that show strong departures from the standard Fermi-liquid behaviour nowadays attract considerable attention. Exemplary compounds to study this so-termed non-Fermi liquid (NFL) behaviour are found amongst dense Kondo f-electron systems. A mechanism of much general interest that may lead to NFL behavior is the proximity to a magnetic quantum critical point (QCP) [1]. Here a T = 0 K electronic instability leads to a phase transition between a strongly renormalised Fermi liquid and a magnetically ordered phase. The quantum phase transition can occur spontaneously or may be induced by tuning the magnetic ordering temperature to 0 K by an external parameter, such as hydrostatic or chemica