Rotational symmetry breaking in the hidden-order phase of URu2Si2 |
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| Authors: | Okazaki R Shibauchi T Shi H J Haga Y Matsuda T D Yamamoto E Onuki Y Ikeda H Matsuda Y |
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| Institution: | Department of Physics, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan. |
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| Abstract: | A second-order phase transition is characterized by spontaneous symmetry breaking. The nature of the broken symmetry in the so-called "hidden-order" phase transition in the heavy-fermion compound URu(2)Si(2), at transition temperature T(h) = 17.5 K, has posed a long-standing mystery. We report the emergence of an in-plane anisotropy of the magnetic susceptibility below T(h), which breaks the four-fold rotational symmetry of the tetragonal URu(2)Si(2). Two-fold oscillations in the magnetic torque under in-plane field rotation were sensitively detected in small pure crystals. Our findings suggest that the hidden-order phase is an electronic "nematic" phase, a translationally invariant metallic phase with spontaneous breaking of rotational symmetry. |
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