Short-range antiferromagnetic correlations in Kondo insulators

TL;DR

This paper investigates how short-range antiferromagnetic correlations affect the transport and thermodynamic properties of Kondo insulators, highlighting the interplay between magnetic correlations and Kondo effects.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical approach that treats inter-site magnetic correlations and local Kondo correlations on equal footing, revealing two competing energy scales.

Findings

Antiferromagnetic correlations induce an effective bandwidth for f-electrons.

The approach identifies two energy scales governing physical properties.

Competition between magnetic and Kondo scales influences transport and thermodynamics.

Abstract

We study the influence of short range antiferromagnetic correlations between local $f$-electrons on the transport and thermodynamic properties of Kondo insulators, as first proposed by Coqblin et al. for metallic heavy fermions. The inter-site magnetic correlations produce an effective bandwidth for the $f$-electrons. They are treated on the same footing as the local Kondo correlations such that two energy scales appear in our approach. We discuss the competition between these two scales on the physical properties.