Optical and magnetic excitations in the underscreened quasiquartet Kondo lattice

Abstract

The underscreened Kondo lattice consisting of a single twofold degenerate conduction band and a crystalline electric-field (CEF) split 4f-electron quasiquartet has nonconventional quasiparticle dispersions obtained from the constrained mean-field theory. An additional genuinely heavy band is found in the main hybridization band gap of the upper and lower hybridzed bands whose heavy effective mass is controled by the CEF splitting. Its presence should profoundly influence the dynamical optical and magnetic response functions. In the former the onset of the optical conductivity is not the main hybridization energy but the much lower Kondo energy scale which appears in the direct transitions to the additional heavy band. The dynamical magnetic response is also strongly modified by the in-gap heavy band which can lead to unconventional resonant excitations that may be interpreted as coherent CEF-Kondo lattice magnetic exciton bands. Their instability at low temperature signifies the onset of induced excitonic magnetism in the underscreened Kondo lattice.