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.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 51 print issues and online access
$199.00 per year
only $3.90 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Stoner, E. C. Collective electron ferromagnetism. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A 165, 372–414 (1938).
Radu, G. T. & Suhl, H. (eds) Magnetism—A Treatise on Modern Theory and Materials (Academic, New York, 1966).
Lonzarich, G. G. in Electrons at the Fermi Surface (ed. Springford, M.) 225–528 (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1980).
Institute of Physics Conference on Non-Fermi Liquid Behaviour in Metals. J. Phys. Cond Matter. (Spec. Issue) 8, 9675–10148 (1996).
Varma, C. M., Nussinov, Z. & van Saarloos, W. Singular Fermi liquids. Phys. Rep. (in the press); also preprint cond-mat 0103393 at 〈http://xxx.lanl.gov〉.
Williams, H. J., Wernick, J. H., Sherwood, R. C. & Wertheim, G. K. Magnetic properties of monosilicides of some 3-d transition elements. J. Appl. Phys. 37, 1256 (1966).
Plumer, M. L. & Walker, M. B. Wavevector and spin reorientation in MnSi. J. Phys. C: Solid State Phys. 14, 4689–4699 (1981).
Ishikawa, Y. & Arai, M. Magnetic phase diagram of MnSi near critical temperature studied by neutron small angle scattering. J. Phys. Soc. Jpn 53, 2726–2733 (1984).
Ishida, M. et al. Crystal chirality and helicity of the helical spin density wave in MnSi: II. polarized neutron diffraction. J. Phys. Soc. Jpn 54, 2975–2982 (1985).
Lebech, B. in Recent Advances in Magnetism of Transition Metal Compounds 167–178 (World Scientific, Singapore, 1993).
Lonzarich, G. G. in Electron (ed. Springford, M.) 109–147 (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1997).
Pfleiderer, C. et al. Coexistence of superconductivity and ferromagnetism in the d-band metal ZrZn2. Nature 412, 58–61 (2001); Erratum Nature 412, 660 (2001).
Fawcett, E., Maita, J. P. & Wernick, J. H. Magnetoelastic and thermal properties of MnSi. Int. J. Magn. 1, 29–34 (1970).
Bloch, D., Voiron, J., Jaccarino, V. & Wernick, J. H. The high field–high pressure magnetic properties of MnSi. Phys. Lett. A 51, 259–291 (1975).
Thompson, J. D., Fisk, Z. & Lonzarich, G. G. Perspective on heavy-electron and Kondo-lattice systems from high pressure studies. Physica B 161, 317–323 (1989).
Pfleiderer, C., McMullan, G. J., Julian, S. R. & Lonzarich, G. G. Magnetic quantum phase transition in MnSi under hydrostatic pressure. Phys. Rev. B 55, 8330–8338 (1997).
Thessieu, C. et al. Field dependence of the magnetic quantum phase transition in MnSi. J. Phys. Condens. Matter 9, 6677–6687 (1997).
Ishikawa, Y. et al. Paramagnetic spin fluctuations in the weak itinerant-electron ferromagnet MnSi. Phys. Rev. B 31, 5884–5893 (1985).
Yasuoka, H., Jaccarino, V., Sherwood, R. C. & Wernick, J. H. NMR and susceptibility studies of MnSi above Tc. J. Phys. Soc. Jpn 44, 842–849 (1978).
Taillefer, L., Lonzarich, G. G. & Strange, P. The band magnetism of MnSi. J. Magn. Magn. Mater. 54–57, 957–958 (1986).
Millis, A. J. Effect of a nonzero temperature on quantum critical points in itinerant fermion systems. Phys. Rev. B 48, 7183–7196 (1993).
Goto, T., Shindo, Y., Takahashi, H. & Ogawa, S. Magnetic properties of the itinerant metamagnetic system Co(S1-xSex)2 under high magnetic field and high pressure. Phys. Rev. B 56(21), 14019–14028 (1997).
Huxley, A., Sheikin, I. & Braithwaite, D. Metamagnetic behavior near the quantum critical point in UGe2. Physica B 284–288, 1277–1278 (2000).
Moriya, T. Spin Fluctuations in Itinerant Electron Magnetism (Springer, Berlin, 1985).
Lonzarich, G. G. & Taillefer, L. Effect of spin fluctuations on the magnetic equation of state of ferromagnetic or nearly ferromagnetic metals. J. Phys. C 18, 4339–4371 (1985).
Varma, C. M. et al. Phenomenology of the normal state of Cu–O high-temperature superconductors. Phys. Rev. Lett. 63, 1996–1999 (1989).
Ford, P. & Mydosh, J. A. Electrical resistivity of noble-metal-host-3d solute spin glass alloys. Phys. Rev. B 14, 2057–2070 (1976).
Rivier, N. & Mensah, A. E. Low temperature resistivity and collective excitations. Physica B 91, 85–88 (1977).
Fischer, K. H. On the electrical resistivity of spin glasses. Z. Phys. B 34, 45–53 (1979).
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.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
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
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/35106527
This article is cited by
-
Infinite critical boson non-Fermi liquid
npj Quantum Materials (2023)
-
Crossed Luttinger liquid hidden in a quasi-two-dimensional material
Nature Physics (2023)
-
Emergence of mesoscale quantum phase transitions in a ferromagnet
Nature (2022)
-
On Curie temperature of B20-MnSi films
Scientific Reports (2022)
-
Unconventional Hund metal in a weak itinerant ferromagnet
Nature Communications (2020)
Comments
By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.