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Abstract:
The interplay of structural, orbital, charge, and spin degrees of
freedom is at the heart of many emergent phenomena, including
superconductivity. Unraveling the underlying forces of such novel phases
is a great challenge because it not only requires understanding each of
these degrees of freedom, it also involves accounting for the interplay
between them. Cerium-based heavy fermion compounds are an ideal
playground for investigating these interdependencies, and we present
evidence for a correlation between orbital anisotropy and the ground
states in a representative family of materials. We have measured the 4f
crystal-electric field ground-state wave functions of the strongly
correlated materials CeRh1-xIrxIn5 with great accuracy using linear
polarization-dependent soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy. These
measurements show that these wave functions correlate with the
ground-state properties of the substitution series, which covers
long-range antiferromagnetic order, unconventional superconductivity,
and coexistence of these two states.
