Suppression of p-Wave Altermagnetism by Localized 4f Electrons in CeNiAsO
Altermagnetism, characterized by momentum-dependent spin splitting and zero net magnetization, has so far been explored mainly in weakly or moderately correlated d-electron systems. How symmetry-allowed altermagnetic band splitting manifests in heavy-fermion materials, where magnetic exchange competes with Kondo correlations, remains unclear. Here we use high-resolution angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) to investigate CeNiAsO, a Kondo-lattice system that was predicted to be a candidate for p-wave altermagnetism. Fermi surface mapping and polarization-dependent ARPES show that the experimentally observed itinerant bands are mainly derived from Ni 3d orbitals, while resonant photoemission reveals that the Ce 4f states remain predominantly localized with residual c-f hybridization. Ultra-low-temperature measurements reveal no resolvable near-Fermi-level p-wave-like exchange splitting on the Ni 3d-derived conduction bands across the successive antiferromagnetic transitions. These experimental observations cannot be captured by an itinerant-4f band-structure description, which predicts a sizable p-wave splitting in the itinerant bands. When the localized Ce 4f character is incorporated, our band structure calculations indicate that the itinerant Ce 4f band weight is shifted away from the Fermi level and the p-wave-like splitting on the Ni 3d-derived bands is reduced to the few-meV scale. These results establish CeNiAsO as a strongly correlated f-electron setting in which the magnetic symmetry allows p-wave-like band splitting, but localized 4f electrons strongly suppress its observable itinerant single-particle signature.