Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 108, Issue 17, Pages 6857-6861Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1103965108
Keywords
Kondo effect; heavy fermion
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Funding
- National Science Foundation (NSF) [NSF-DMR-0801253]
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Inhomogeneous electronic states resulting from entangled spin, charge, and lattice degrees of freedom are hallmarks of strongly correlated electron materials; such behavior has been observed in many classes of d-electron materials, including the high-T-c copper-oxide superconductors, manganites, and most recently the iron-pnictide superconductors. The complexity generated by competing phases in these materials constitutes a considerable theoretical challenge-one that still defies a complete description. Here, we report a manifestation of electronic inhomogeneity in a strongly correlated f-electron system, using CeCoIn5 as an example. A thermodynamic analysis of its superconductivity, combined with nuclear quadrupole resonance measurements, shows that nonmagnetic impurities (Y, La, Yb, Th, Hg, and Sn) locally suppress unconventional superconductivity, generating an inhomogeneous electronic Swiss cheese due to disrupted periodicity of the Kondo lattice. Our analysis may be generalized to include related systems, suggesting that electronic inhomogeneity should be considered broadly in Kondo lattice materials.
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