Onset of antiferromagnetism in heavy-fermion metals

There are two main theoretical descriptions of antiferromagnets. The first arises from atomic physics, which predicts that atoms with unpaired electrons develop magnetic moments. In a solid, the coupling between moments on nearby ions then yields anti-ferromagnetic order at low temperatures¹. The second description, based on the physics of electron fluids or 'Fermi liquids', states that Coulomb interactions can drive the fluid to adopt a more stable configuration by developing a spin density wave^2,3. It is at present unknown which view is appropriate at a 'quantum critical point', where the antiferromagnetic transition temperature vanishes^4-7. Here we report neutron scattering and bulk magnetometry measurements of the metal CeCu(6-x)Au(x), which allow us to discriminate between the two models. We find evidence for an atomically local contribution to the magnetic correlations which develops at the critical gold concentration (x(c) = 0.1), corresponding to a magnetic ordering temperature of zero. This contribution implies that a Fermi-liquid-destroying spin-localizing transition, unanticipated from the spin density wave description, coincides with the antiferromagnetic quantum critical point.