RKKY Interaction and Intrinsic Frustration in Non-Fermi Liquid Metals

Abstract

We study RKKY interaction in non-Fermi liquid metals. We find that the RKKY interaction mediated by non-Fermi liquid metals can be of much longer range than for a Fermi liquid. The oscillatory nature of RKKY interaction thus becomes more important in non-Fermi liquids, and gives rise to enhanced frustration when the spins form a lattice. Frustration suppresses the magnetic ordering temperature of the lattice spin system. Furthermore, we find that the spin system with longer range RKKY interaction can be described by the Brazovskii model, where the ordering wavevector lies on a shell with constant radius. Strong fluctuations in such model lead to a first-order phase transition and/or glassy phase. This may explain some recent experiments where glassy behavior was observed in stoichiometric heavy fermion material close to a ferromagnetic quantum critical point.