Violation of the Wiedemann-Franz Law at the Kondo Breakdown Quantum Critical Point

Abstract

We study the electrical and thermal transport near the heavy-fermion quantum critical point, identified with the breakdown of the Kondo effect. We show that the electrical conductivity comes mainly from conduction electrons while the thermal conductivity is given by both conduction electrons and localized fermions (spinons), scattered with hybridization fluctuations of dynamical exponent z = 3. As a result, we reveal that not only electrical but also thermal resistivity displays quasilinear temperature dependence in the intermediate temperature range, the main prediction of our transport study. An important feature turns out to be emergence of additional entropy carriers, that is, spinon excitations. We find that the Wiedemann-Franz ratio should be larger than the standard value, differentiating the Kondo breakdown scenario from the Hertz-Moriya-Millis framework.