Anomalous Hall Effect and Quantum Criticality in Geometrically Frustrated Heavy Fermion Metals

Abstract

Studies on the heavy-fermion pyrochlore iridate (Pr₂Ir₂O₇) point to the role of time-reversal-symmetry breaking in geometrically frustrated Kondo lattices. Here, we address the effect of Kondo coupling and chiral spin liquids in a J₁-J₂ model on a square lattice and a model on a kagome lattice via a large-N method, based on a fermionic representation of the spin operators, and consider a new mechanism for anomalous Hall effect for the chiral phases. We calculate the anomalous Hall response for the chiral states of both the Kondo destroyed and Kondo screened phases. Across the quantum critical point, the anomalous Hall coefficient jumps when a sudden reconstruction of Fermi surfaces occurs. We discuss the implications of our results for the heavy-fermion pyrochlore iridate and propose an interface structure based on Kondo insulators to explore such effects further.