Thermodynamic Measurement of Angular Anisotropy at the Hidden Order Transition of URu_{2}Si_{2}

Phys Rev Lett. 2016 Oct 7;117(15):157201. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.157201. Epub 2016 Oct 5.

Abstract

The heavy fermion compound URu_{2}Si_{2} continues to attract great interest due to the unidentified hidden order it develops below 17.5 K. The unique Ising character of the spin fluctuations and low-temperature quasiparticles is well established. We present detailed measurements of the angular anisotropy of the nonlinear magnetization that reveal a cos^{4}θ Ising anisotropy both at and above the ordering transition. With Landau theory, we show this implies a strongly Ising character of the itinerant hidden order parameter.