We present data on the optical conductivity of URu2−x(Fe,Os)xSi2. While the parent material URu2Si2 enters the enigmatic hidden order phase below 17.5 K, an antiferromagnetic phase is induced by the substitution of Fe or Os onto the Ru sites. We find that both the HO and the AFM phases exhibit an identical gap structure that is characterized by a loss of conductivity below the gap energy with spectral weight transferred to a narrow frequency region just above the gap, the typical optical signature of a density wave. The AFM phase is marked by strong increases in both transition temperature and the energy of the gap associated with the transition. In the normal phase just above the transition the optical scattering rate varies as ω 2 . We find that in both the HO and the AFM phases, our data are consistent with elastic resonant scattering of a Fermi liquid. This indicates that the appearance of a coherent state is a necessary condition for either ordered phase to emerge. Our measurements favor models in which the HO and the AFM phases are driven by the common physics of a nesting-induced density-wave-gap.

The Kondo-necklace model can describe magnetic low-energy limit of strongly correlated heavy fermion materials. There exist multiple energy scales in this model corresponding to each phase of the system. Here, we study quantum phase transition between the Kondo-singlet phase and the antiferromagnetic long-range ordered phase, and show the effect of anisotropies in terms of quantum information properties and vanishing energy gap. We employ the "perturbative continuous unitary transformations" approach to calculate the energy gap and spin-spin correlations for the model in the thermodynamic limit of one, two, and three spatial dimensions as well as for spin ladders. In particular, we show that the method, although being perturbative, can predict the expected quantum critical point, where the gap of low-energy spectrum vanishes, which is in good agreement with results of other numerical and Green's function analyses. In addition, we employ concurrence, a bipartite entanglement measure, to study the criticality of the model. Absence of singularities in the derivative of concurrence in two and three dimensions in the Kondo-necklace model shows that this model features multipartite entanglement. We also discuss crossover from the one-dimensional to the two-dimensional model via the ladder structure.

Recently, a new family of R-Cd binary icosahedral quasicrystals has been discovered [1]. Using optical reflectance spectroscopy, we have examined the quasicrystal GdCd7.98and the approximants GdCd6and YCd6. To explain the unique behaviour of electrons in a quasiperiodic lattice Mayou [2] created a model of electron transport due to anomalous diffusion of wave packets scattering from the quasiperiodic lattice. We have determined the optical conductivity of the above-mentioned materials from 7.5 meV to 5.5 eV and have used Mayou's model of optical conductivity for approximants and quasicrystals, σ1∝ Re[ (1/(γ-iω))^(2β-1) ], to describe the low frequency behaviour. Despite the concern of Mayou of not being able to differentiate experimentally between normal metallic conductivity of ballistic electrons, β=1, and sub-ballistic conductivity, 1/2<β<1, we clearly see β≍3/4 in the intraband peak of the icosahedral approximants, which has not been observed before. Before this work, the only unambiguously Drude-like peak seen in any quasicrystal or their approximant occurred in the decagonal approximant γ-brass, which was fit with exactly β=1 [3]. However, unlike the approximants in our study, this sample of γ-brass was admittedly not a good approximant to a quasicrystal with its small lattice constant. In the GdCd7.98quasicrystal, we observe low frequency behaviour that lacks a Drude peak but is not nearly perfectly linear as seen by others. In this case, the low frequency behaviour is qualitatively similar to the diffusive regime, 0<β<1/2, that is often seen. However, it is not adequately modelled by Mayou's generalized Drude model. With these results, unlike in previous optical conductivity studies, we have a striking difference in the low frequency conductivity that suggests that there is a difference in the physics of the optical conductivity of periodic and quasiperiodic lattices that needs to be explored.