Bianchi A, Movshovich R, Vekhter I, Pagliuso P G, Sarrao J L
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA.
Phys Rev Lett. 2003 Dec 19;91(25):257001. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.257001. Epub 2003 Dec 15.
We measured the specific heat and resistivity of heavy fermion CeCoIn5 between the superconducting critical field H(c2)=5 T and 9 T, with the field in the [001] direction, and at temperatures down to 50 mK. At 5 T the data show a non-Fermi liquid (NFL) behavior down to the lowest temperatures. At the field above 8 T the data exhibit a crossover from the Fermi liquid to a non-Fermi liquid behavior. We analyzed the scaling properties of the specific heat and compared both the resistivity and the specific heat with the predictions of a spin-fluctuation theory. Our analysis leads us to suggest that the NFL behavior is due to incipient antiferromagnetism (AFM) in CeCoIn5 with the quantum critical point in the vicinity of H(c2). Below H(c2) the AFM phase which competes with the paramagnetic ground state is superseded by the superconducting transition.
