Abstract
At ambient pressure the spinel is a metal with a heavy fermion ground state. However, under applied pressure a transition to an insulating, nonmagnetic state occurs. Powder x-ray diffraction has been used to study structural changes associated with this transition, and reveals that the ambient-pressure spinel structure distorts to a monoclinic cell of , or symmetry above 11 GPa at low temperatures. The changes of structure and properties provide evidence for orbital molecule formation in the cubic phase at high pressures and low temperatures that leads to long-range orbital molecule order in the monoclinic phase.
- Received 11 September 2019
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.4.015002
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