New Magnetic State in Incommensurate Magnetic Phase of Heavy-Fermion Superconductor CeRh0.6Co0.4In5

Abstract

We performed elastic neutron scattering experiments on solid solution CeRh1-xCoxIn5 with x=0.4 to clarify the nature of the antiferromagnetic (AF) phase in the vicinity of the quantum critical point. We observed the incommensurate AF order below T_Nh=3.5 K. The structure of the incommensurate AF order is basically unchanged from that for pure CeRhIn5. We further found the evolution of a new commensurate AF order with the modulation of q_c=(1/2,1/2,1/2) below T_Nc=2.9 K. The volume-averaged moments for the incommensurate and commensurate AF phases are 0.38 mu_B/Ce and 0.21 mu_B/Ce, respectively, which are reduced from the incommensurate AF moment (0.75 mu_B/Ce) for pure CeRhIn5. We suggest from these results that the commensurate magnetic correlation may be tightly coupled with the superconductivity observed below T_c=1.4 K.