UOTe Under Extreme Conditions: Exploring a Layered Uranium Antiferromagnet

UOTe is a layered van der Waals uranium antiferromagnet that combines strong spin-orbit coupling, correlated 5f electrons, magnetic order, and nontrivial electronic structure. It orders near 150 K into a compensated antiferromagnetic state, while ARPES and electronic structure calculations identify an antiferromagnetic Dirac semimetal with temperature-dependent uranium 5f hybridization. Transmission electron microscopy has also revealed an incommensurate chiral structural superlattice that lowers the crystal symmetry and is closely connected to the anomalous Hall response that emerges in flakes thinner than approximately 100 nm.

My work on UOTe has focused on using high magnetic fields and pressure as complementary probes of this coupled magnetic, electronic, and structural state. Building on the initial characterization of the material, We studied its magnetic response in pulsed fields to 73 T, where the strongly anisotropic antiferromagnetic state persists to approximately 50 T for fields along the c axis before entering a broad, hysteretic metamagnetic regime. I have also investigated UOTe under pressure using synchrotron X-ray diffraction together with transport on approximately 30 nm thick flakes contacted using lithographically patterned diamond anvils, allowing the structural, Hall, and magnetic evolution to be followed to nearly 50 GPa.

Taken together, these studies establish UOTe as an unusually rich uranium quantum material in which magnetism, dimensionality, lattice symmetry, electronic correlations, and topology are strongly intertwined. Neutron scattering, ARPES, microscopy, transport, high magnetic fields, and high pressure provide complementary views of how these degrees of freedom evolve across the UOTe phase diagram.