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Non-Fermi-liquid nature of the normal state of itinerant-electron ferromagnets

Nature volume 414, pages 427–430 (2001)Cite this article

Abstract

A century of research on magnetic phenomena had led to the view that the normal state of itinerant-electron ferromagnets such as Fe, Ni and Co could be described in terms of the standard model of the metallic state or its extension known as the nearly ferromagnetic Fermi liquid theory1,2,3. In recent years, however, a large body of observations has accumulated from various complex intermetallic systems4,5 that raises the possibility that this assumption might be wrong. Here we examine this issue by means of high-precision measurements of the electrical transport and magnetic properties of pure ferromagnets—in particular, MnSi—in which the Curie temperature is tuned towards absolute zero by the application of hydrostatic pressure. With this method, it is possible for us to study the normal state over an extraordinarily large range of temperature of up to five orders of magnitude above the Curie temperature. Our results using MnSi reveal a particularly striking combination of properties—most notably a T3/2 power law for the resistivity—showing clearly that the normal state of this itinerant-electron ferromagnet cannot be described in terms of the standard model of metals.

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Figure 1: Diagram of the ferromagnetic state of MnSi and its crystallographic structure16,17.
Figure 2: Temperature dependence of the resistivity ρ(T) of MnSi above the critical pressure in different T regimes.
Figure 3: Comparison of the experimentally observed temperature dependence of the resistivity above pc = 14.6 kbar with predictions of the model of a nearly ferromagnetic Fermi liquid (NFFL)5,11,16,21,24,25 as evaluated for MnSi.
Figure 4: Regime of T3/2 resistivity in the T–B plane just above pc = 14.6 kbar.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank N. R. Bernhoeft, S. Brown, P. Coleman, N. Doiron-Layraud, J. Flouquet, F. M. Grosche, S. M. Hayden, D. Khmelnitskii, H. v. Löhneysen, G. J. McMullen, A. J. Millis, A. Rosch, S. Sachdev, L. Taileffer, A. Tsvelik, T. Vojta and I. R. Walker. Financial support by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Germany), the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UK) and the European Science Foundation under FERLIN are gratefully acknowledged.

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  1. Physikalisches Institut, Universität Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, D-76128, Germany

    C. Pfleiderer

  2. Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB3 0HE, UK

    S. R. Julian & G. G. Lonzarich

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  1. C. Pfleiderer
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  2. S. R. Julian
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  3. G. G. Lonzarich
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Correspondence to C. Pfleiderer.

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Pfleiderer, C., Julian, S. & Lonzarich, G. Non-Fermi-liquid nature of the normal state of itinerant-electron ferromagnets. Nature 414, 427–430 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35106527

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