Uniaxial stress tuning of geometrical frustration in a Kondo lattice

Abstract

Hexagonal CeRhSn with paramagnetic $4f$ moments on a distorted Kagome lattice displays zero-field quantum critical behavior related to geometrical frustration. We report high-resolution thermal expansion and magnetostriction measurements under multiextreme conditions such as uniaxial stress up to 200 MPa, temperatures down to 0.1 K and magnetic fields up to 10 T. Under uniaxial stress along the $a$-direction, quantum criticality disappears and a complex magnetic phase diagram arises with a sequence of phases below 1.2 K and fields between 0 and 3 T ($\parallel a$). Since the Kondo coupling increases with stress, which alone would stabilize paramagnetic behavior in CeRhSn, the observed order arises from the release of geometrical frustration by in-plane stress.