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arXiv · 2508.04238

Cooperative Jahn-Teller dynamics of boron clusters in the infrared conductivity of heavy fermion metal CeB6 and unconventional superconductor ZrB12

Gennady Komandin·Elena Zhukova·Boris Gorshunov·Andrey Azarevich·Andrey Muratov·Yurii Aleshchenko·Nikolay Sluchanko
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Abstract

A thorough study of the wide-range (40-35000 cm-1) dynamic conductivity and permittivity spectra of the archetypal heavy fermion metal CeB6 and unconventional superconductor ZrB12 was carried out at room temperature. Both the Drude-type components and overdamped excitations were separated and analyzed. An additional absorption band observed above 200 cm-1 was attributed to the cooperative Jahn-Teller dynamics of the boron complexes in CeB6 and ZrB12. It was shown that nonequilibrium electrons participating in the formation of the collective JT modes dominate in charge transport, and fraction of Drude-type electrons does not exceed 37% in CeB6 and 23% in ZrB12. We discuss also the additional Drude-type component in ZrB12 in terms of far-infrared conductivity from the sliding charge density wave, and suggest the localized mode scenario reconciles the strong difference between the number of conduction electrons obtained from the Hall effect and optical sum rule analysis in CeB6.

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Gennady Komandin, Elena Zhukova, Boris Gorshunov, Andrey Azarevich, Andrey Muratov, Yurii Aleshchenko, Nikolay Sluchanko. 2025-08-06. Cooperative Jahn-Teller dynamics of boron clusters in the infrared conductivity of heavy fermion metal CeB6 and unconventional superconductor ZrB12. https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.04238

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