Dispersion and damping of zone-boundary magnons in the noncentrosymmetric superconductor CePt3Si

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • D. S. Inosov - , Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research (Author)
  • P. Bourges - , Université Paris-Saclay (Author)
  • A. Ivanov - , ILL - Institut Laue-Langevin (Author)
  • A. Prokofiev - , Vienna University of Technology (Author)
  • E. Bauer - , Vienna University of Technology (Author)
  • B. Keimer - , Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) (Author)

Abstract

Inelastic neutron scattering (INS) is employed to study damped spin-wave excitations in the noncentrosymmetric heavy-fermion superconductor CePt3Si along the antiferromagnetic Brillouin zone boundary in the low-temperature magnetically ordered state. Measurements along the (1/2 1/2 L) and (H H 1/2 - H) reciprocal-space directions reveal deviations in the spin-wave dispersion from the previously reported model. The broad asymmetric shape of the peaks in energy signifies strong spin-wave damping by interactions with the particle-hole continuum. Their energy width exhibits no evident anomalies as a function of momentum along the (1/2 1/2 L) direction which could be attributed to Fermi surface nesting effects, implying the absence of pronounced commensurate nesting vectors at the magnetic zone boundary. In agreement with a previous study, we find no signatures of the superconducting transition in the magnetic excitation spectrum, such as a magnetic resonant mode or a superconducting spin gap, either at the magnetic ordering wavevector (0 0 1/2) or at the zone boundary. However, the low superconducting transition temperature in this material still leaves the possibility of such features being weak and therefore hidden below the incoherent background at energies less than or similar to 0.1 meV, precluding their detection by INS.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number455704
Number of pages5
JournalJournal of Physics-Condensed Matter
Volume23
Issue number45
Publication statusPublished - 16 Nov 2011
Peer-reviewedYes
Externally publishedYes

External IDs

Scopus 80155181511

Keywords

Library keywords