Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The destruction of the Kondo effect in a local-moment metal can lead to a topological non-Fermi-liquid phase, dubbed fractionalized Fermi liquid, with spinon-type excitations and an emergent gauge field. We demonstrate that, if the latter displays an internal π-flux structure, a chiral heavy-fermion metal emerges near the Kondo-breakdown transition. Utilizing a parton mean-field theory describing the transition between a conventional heavy Fermi liquid and a U(1) fractionalized Fermi liquid, we find a novel intermediate phase near the transition whose emergent flux pattern spontaneously breaks both translation and time-reversal symmetries. This phase is an orbital antiferromagnet, and we derive a Landau-type theory which shows that such a phase generically emerges from a π-flux spin liquid. We discuss the relevance to pertinent experiments.
Source: Physical Review Letters
Authors: Tom Drechsler, Matthias Vojta
Institution: Technische Universität Dresden
Language: English
Subfield: Condensed Matter Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
OpenAlex ID: W4408406857