Abstract: Kondo insulator materials(1)-such as CeRhAs, CeRhSb, YbB12, Ce3Bi4Pt3 and SmB6-are 3d, 4f and 5f intermetallic compounds that have attracted considerable interest in recent years(2-5). At high temperatures, they behave like metals. But as temperature is reduced, an energy gap opens in the conduction band at the Fermi energy and the materials become insulating. This contrasts with other f-electron compounds, which are metallic at all temperatures. The formation of the gap in Kondo insulators has been proposed to be a consequence of hybridization between the conduction band and the f-electron levels(6,7), giving a 'spin' gap. If this is indeed the case, metallic behaviour should be recovered when the gap is closed by changing external parameters, such as magnetic field or pressure. Some experimental evidence suggests that the gap can be closed in SmB6 (refs 5, 8) and YbB12 (ref. 9). Here we present specific-heat measurements of Ce3Bi4Pt3 in d.c. and pulsed magnetic fields up to 60 tesla. Numerical results and the analysis of our data using the Coqblin-Schrieffer model demonstrate unambiguously a field-induced insulator-to-metal transition.

Abstract: Raman scattering in detwinned YBa2Cu3O6.65 single crystals is studied as a function of photoexcitation and annealing. Copper-oxygen chain-related forbidden Raman bands that are known to strongly bleach with illumination at low temperatures, increase their intensity with chain fragmentation induced by annealing at high temperature. This contrasting behavior proves the conjunction of short Cu-O fragments into longer chains on photoexcitation. We interpret the Raman modes as due to vibrations at the end of CuO chain fragments and Cu-O-Cu monomers, and use their evolution with illumination and annealing as anisotropic sensitive markers of oxygen reordering processes. The identification of the “forbidden” Raman bands is discussed in the context of our results and recent literature in the subject. We also present absorption measurements performed on GdBa2Cu3Ox thin films with varying oxygen content. These experiments show that the 2.2-eV absorption and the chain-related Raman peaks have different dependencies with oxygen content and illumination, ruling out an explanation that suggests that the Raman intensity reduction of these modes is due to a photobleaching of intermediate defect states. These results highlight the potentialities of Raman scattering for oxygen dynamics studies and demonstrate the presence of photoinduced oxygen ordering in these high-Tc superconductor compounds.