Giant Anisotropic Magnetoresistance due to Purely Orbital Rearrangement in the Quadrupolar Heavy Fermion Superconductor PrV$_2$Al$_{20}$

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of giant, anisotropic magnetoresistance caused by orbital rearrangement in the non-magnetic heavy fermion superconductor PrV$_2$Al$_{20}$, revealing Fermi surface changes driven by quadrupole moments under high magnetic fields.

Contribution

It demonstrates that orbital rearrangement induces giant anisotropic magnetoresistance in a non-magnetic heavy fermion superconductor, a novel mechanism in correlated metals.

Findings

Large magnetoresistance jump (~100%) at 12 T for [100] direction.

Fermi surface reconstruction linked to quadrupole ordering.

High-field phase appears between 12 T and 25 T.

Abstract

We report the discovery of giant and anisotropic magnetoresistance due to the orbital rearrangement in a non-magnetic correlated metal. In particular, we measured the magnetoresistance under fields up to 31.4 T in the cubic Pr-based heavy fermion superconductor PrV$_2$Al$_{20}$ with a non-magnetic $\Gamma _3$ doublet ground state, exhibiting antiferro-quadrupole ordering below 0.7 K. For the [100] direction, we find that the high-field phase appears between 12 T and 25 T, accompanied by a large jump at 12 T in the magnetoresistance ($\Delta MR \sim $ 100 $\% $) and in the anisotropic magnetoresistivity (AMR) ratio by $\sim $ 20 $\% $. These observations indicate that the strong hybridization between the conduction electrons and anisotropic quadrupole moments leads to the Fermi surface reconstruction upon crossing the field-induced antiferro-quadrupole (orbital) rearrangement.