Role of commensurate and incommensurate low-energy excitations in the paramagnetic to hidden-order transition of URu2Si2 Niklowitz, P.G.; Dunsiger, S.R.; Pfleiderer, C.; Link, P.; Schneidewind, A.; Faulhaber, E.; Vojta, M.; Huang, Y.; Mydosh, J.A.
Published in:Physical Review B
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevB.92.115116
Link to publicationCitation for published version (APA): Niklowitz, P. G., Dunsiger, S. R., Pfleiderer, C., Link, P., Schneidewind, A., Faulhaber, E., ... Mydosh, J. A. (2015). Role of commensurate and incommensurate low-energy excitations in the paramagnetic to hidden-order transition of URu2Si2. Physical Review B, 92(11), [115116]. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.92.115116
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Disclaimer/Complaints regulationsIf you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: http://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. We report low-energy inelastic neutron scattering data of the paramagnetic (PM) to hidden-order (HO) phase transition at T 0 = 17.5 K in URu 2 Si 2 . While confirming previous results for the HO and PM phases, our data reveal a pronounced wave-vector dependence of low-energy excitations across the phase transition. To analyze the energy scans we employ a damped harmonic oscillator model containing a fit parameter 1/ which is expected to diverge at a second-order phase transition. Counter to expectations the excitations at Q 1 ≈ (1.4,0,0) show an abrupt steplike suppression of 1/ below T 0 , whereas excitations at Q 0 = (1,0,0), associated with large-moment antiferromagnetism (LMAF) under pressure, show an enhancement and a pronounced peak of 1/ at T 0 . Therefore, at the critical HO temperature T 0 , LMAF fluctuations become nearly critical as well. This is the behavior expected of a "supervector" order parameter with nearly degenerate components for the HO and LMAF leading to nearly isotropic fluctuations in the combined order-parameter space.