Electronic Structure of the Metallic Antiferromagnet PdCrO$_2$ Measured by Angle-Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy

TL;DR

This study uses ARPES to investigate the electronic structure of PdCrO₂, revealing that the conduction electrons are largely unaffected by the antiferromagnetic order, indicating weak coupling between localized spins and itinerant electrons.

Contribution

First ARPES characterization of PdCrO₂ showing the decoupling of magnetic order from conduction electrons, supported by slab band structure calculations.

Findings

Bulk Fermi surface shows no electronic reconstruction in the antiferromagnetic state

Surface and bulk states can be distinguished experimentally and theoretically

Negligible interaction between Cr spins and Pd conduction electrons

Abstract

PdCrO$_2$ is material which has attracted interest due to the coexistence of metallic conductivity associated with itinerant Pd 4d electrons and antiferromagnetic order arising from localized Cr spins. A central issue is determining to what extent the magnetic order couples to the conduction electrons. Here we perform angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) to experimentally characterize the electronic structure. We find that the Fermi surface has contributions from both bulk and surface states, which can be experimentally distinguished and theoretically verified by slab band structure calculations. The bulk Fermi surface shows no signature of electronic reconstruction in the antiferromagnetic state. This observation suggests that there is negligible interaction between the localized Cr spin structure and the itinerant Pd electrons measured by ARPES.