Noncollinear ferromagnetism in the Kondo-lattice compound
Phys. Rev. B 113, 134431 – Published 20 April, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/r1qt-9pkk
Abstract
The dense Kondo lattice exhibits superconductivity after the magnetic ordering is suppressed by pressure. Here the ambient pressure magnetic state is investigated via magnetization, heat capacity, powder neutron diffraction, and muon-spin relaxation measurements. Neutron diffraction results reveal a noncollinear ferromagnetic structure, where the four inequivalent Ce sites exhibit different magnetic moments. Point-charge model calculations of the crystalline electric field (CEF) ground states corroborate different moments between the sites, and suggest sizable components of the moments along different directions, consistent with the noncollinear structure. Analysis of the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) interaction for the bonds connecting Ce atoms demonstrates that most of these bonds exhibit a nonzero DM vector, suggesting that competition between intersite magnetic exchange interactions, CEF driven single-ion anisotropy, the Kondo effect, and the DM interaction may drive the noncollinear ferromagnetism.
