Abstract When a system close to a continuous phase transition is subjected to perturbations, it takes an exceptionally long time to return to equilibrium. This critical slowing down is observed universally in the dynamics of bosonic excitations, such as order-parameter collective modes, but it is not generally expected to occur for fermionic excitations. Here using terahertz time-domain spectroscopy, we find evidence for fermionic critical slowing down in YbRh2Si2 close to a quantum phase transition between an antiferromagnetic phase and a heavy Fermi liquid. In the latter phase, the relevant quasiparticles are a quantum superposition of itinerant and localized electronic states with a strongly enhanced effective mass. As the temperature is lowered on the heavy-Fermi-liquid side of the transition, the heavy-fermion spectral weight builds up until the Kondo temperature TK ≈ 25 K, then decays towards the quantum phase transition and is, thereafter, followed by a logarithmic rise of the quasiparticle excitation rate below 10 K. A two-band heavy-Fermi-liquid theory shows that this is indicative of the fermionic critical slowing down associated with heavy-fermion breakdown near the quantum phase transition. The critical exponent of this breakdown could be used to classify this system among a wider family of fermionic quantum phase transitions that is yet to be fully explored.
Cavity quantum electrodynamics offers a route to control quantum phases by using vacuum fluctuations of confined electromagnetic fields. In particular, planar cavities based on polar van der Waals materials can generate strongly confined modes and are promising for controlling two-dimensional correlated materials. Recently, moiré materials have become central platforms for studying two-dimensional heavy-fermion systems and their quantum phase transitions. Kondo lattices provide a prototypical model for studying quantum phase boundaries, driven by competition between Kondo screening and the ordering of local magnetic moments. We show that a cavity-induced interaction can shift the quantum phase transitions between a heavy-fermion phase and an antiferromagnetic phase in a two-dimensional Kondo lattice through a momentum-dependent self-energy of the conduction bands. For the longitudinal projected field motivated by h-BN hyperbolic phonon polaritons, the self-energy favors Kondo hybridization and expands the heavy-fermion region. Transverse and circular in-plane model structures give distinct effects, with the transverse case relatively favoring the magnetically ordered phase and the circular case lying between the longitudinal and transverse cases. These results indicate that electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations can effectively modify the control parameters of strongly correlated two-dimensional Kondo materials.
We study the zero-temperature phase diagram of bosons interacting via screened Coulomb (Yukawa) potential by means of the diffusion Monte Carlo method. The Yukawa potential is used as a model interaction in the neutron matter, dusty plasmas, and charged colloids. As shown by Petrov et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 130407 (2007)], interactions between weakly bound molecules of heavy and light fermionic atoms are described by an effective Yukawa potential with a strength related to the heavy-light mass ratio
M/m, which might lead to crystallization in a two-dimensional geometry if the mass ratio of heavy-light fermions exceeds a certain critical value. In the present work we do a thorough study of the quantum three-dimensional Yukawa system. For strong interactions (equivalently, large mass ratios) the system experiences several phase transitions as the density is increased, passing from gas to solid and to gas phase again. Weakly interacting Yukawa particles do not crystallize at any density. We find the minimal interaction strength at which the crystallization happens. In terms of the two-component fermionic system, this strength corresponds to a heavy-light mass ratio of $M/m\ensuremath{\sim}180$, so that it is impossible to realize the gas-crystal transition in a conventional bulk system. For the Yukawa model of fermionic mixtures we also analyze the possibility of building molecular systems with very large effective mass ratios by confining the heavy component to a sufficiently deep optical lattice. We show how the effective mass of the heavy component can be made arbitrarily large by increasing the lattice depth, thus leading to a tunable effective mass ratio that can be used to realize a molecular superlattice.