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Formation of a topological non-Fermi liquid in MnSi

Nature volume 497, pages 231–234 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

Fermi liquid theory provides a remarkably powerful framework for the description of the conduction electrons in metals and their ordering phenomena, such as superconductivity, ferromagnetism, and spin- and charge-density-wave order. A different class of ordering phenomena of great interest concerns spin configurations that are topologically protected, that is, their topology can be destroyed only by forcing the average magnetization locally to zero1. Examples of such configurations are hedgehogs (points at which all spins are either pointing inwards or outwards) and vortices. A central question concerns the nature of the metallic state in the presence of such topologically distinct spin textures. Here we report a high-pressure study of the metallic state at the border of the skyrmion lattice in MnSi, which represents a new form of magnetic order composed of topologically non-trivial vortices2. When long-range magnetic order is suppressed under pressure, the key characteristic of the skyrmion lattice—that is, the topological Hall signal due to the emergent magnetic flux associated with the topological winding—is unaffected in sign or magnitude and becomes an important characteristic of the metallic state. The regime of the topological Hall signal in temperature, pressure and magnetic field coincides thereby with the exceptionally extended regime of a pronounced non-Fermi-liquid resistivity3,30. The observation of this topological Hall signal in the regime of the NFL resistivity suggests empirically that spin correlations with non-trivial topological character may drive a breakdown of Fermi liquid theory in pure metals.

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Figure 1: Temperature and field dependence of the resistivity, ρxx , and Hall resistivity, ρxy , of MnSi over a wide range.
Figure 2: Hall resistivity, ρxy , and magnetoresistance, ρxx , for low fields at various pressures.
Figure 3: Phase diagrams of MnSi.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank P. Böni, K. Everschor, M. Garst, M. Janoschek, S. Mayr and A. Rosch for discussions and support. R.R., M.H., A.B., M.W. and C.F. acknowledge financial support through the TUM Graduate School. Financial support through DFG TRR80 and DFG FOR960 as well as ERC-AdG (291079 TOPFIT) are gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Physik Department E21, Technische Universität München, Garching, D-85748, Germany

    R. Ritz, M. Halder, M. Wagner, C. Franz, A. Bauer & C. Pfleiderer

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  1. R. Ritz
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  2. M. Halder
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  3. M. Wagner
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  4. C. Franz
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  5. A. Bauer
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  6. C. Pfleiderer
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Contributions

R.R. and C.P. developed the experimental set-up; R.R. performed the transport measurements; M.H. and M.W. performed magnetization measurements; C.F. wrote the software for analysing the data; A.B. grew the single-crystal samples and characterized them; R.R. and C.P. analysed the experimental data; C.P. supervised the experimental work; C.P. proposed this study and wrote the manuscript; all authors discussed the data and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to R. Ritz or C. Pfleiderer.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

This file contains Supplementary Text and Data, which gives details of the experimental methods and includes additional data in support of the results. Also included are Supplementary Figures 1-3, Supplementary Table 1 and additional references. (PDF 461 kb)

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Ritz, R., Halder, M., Wagner, M. et al. Formation of a topological non-Fermi liquid in MnSi. Nature 497, 231–234 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12023

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