Impurities in 3D quadratic band-touching Luttinger semimetals : Friedel and RKKY oscillations

TL;DR

This paper studies how impurities affect electronic and magnetic responses in 3D Luttinger semimetals, revealing anisotropic Friedel and RKKY oscillations influenced by strong spin-orbit coupling, with implications for materials like YPtBi.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of impurity-induced oscillations in 3D Luttinger semimetals considering strong spin-orbit effects, highlighting robust spin-orbital signatures at finite temperatures.

Findings

Short-distance responses diverge as 1/r^4

Anisotropic Friedel and RKKY oscillations observed

Spin-orbital signatures persist at finite temperature

Abstract

We investigate the response of 3D Luttinger semimetals to localized charge and spin impurities as a function of doping. The strong spin-orbit coupling of these materials strongly influences the Friedel oscillations and RKKY interactions. This can be seen at short distances with an $1/r^4$ divergence of the responses, and anisotropic behavior. Certain of the spin-orbital signatures are robust to temperature, even if the charge and spin oscillations are smeared out, and give an unusual diamagnetic Pauli susceptibility. We compare our results to the experimental literature on the bismuth-based half-Heuslers such as YPtBi and on the pyrochlore iridate Pr$_2$Ir$_2$O$_7$.