Quantum Critical Point of Itinerant Antiferromagnet in the Heavy Fermion Ce(Ru_{1-x}Rh_x)_2Si_2

Abstract

A focus of recent experimental and theoretical studies on heavy fermion systems close to antiferromagnetic (AFM) quantum critical points (QCP) is directed toward revealing the nature of the fixed point, i.e., whether it is an itinerant antiferromagnet [spin density wave (SDW)] type or a locally-critical fixed point. The relevance of the local QCP was proposed to explain the E/T-scaling with an anomalous exponent observed for the AFM QCP of CeCu_{5.9}Au_{0.1}. In this work, we have investigated an AFM QCP of another archetypal heavy fermion system Ce(Ru_{1-x}Rh_x)_2Si_2 with x = 0 and 0.03 (sim x_c) using single-crystalline neutron scattering. Accurate measurements of the dynamical susceptibility Im[chi(Q,E)] at the AFM wave vector Q = 0.35 c^* have shown that Im[chi(Q,E)] is well described by a Lorentzian and its energy width Gamma(Q), i.e., the inverse correlation time depends on temperature as Gamma(Q) = c_1 + c_2 T^{3/2 +- 0.1}, where c_1 and c_2 are x dependent constants, in low temperature ranges.This critical exponent 3/2 proves that the QCP is controlled by the SDW QCP in three space dimensions studied by the renormalization group and self-consistent renormalization theories.