Orbital ordering and fluctuations in a kagome superconductor CsV3Sb5

Abstract

Recently, competing electronic instabilities, including superconductivity and density-wave-like order, have been discovered in vanadium-based kagome metals AV3Sb5 (A = K, Rb, Cs) with a nontrivial band topology. This finding stimulates wide interests to study the interplay of these competing electronic orders and possible exotic excitations in the superconducting state. Here, in order to further clarify the nature of density-wave-like transition in these kagome superconductors, we performed 51V and 133Cs nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) measurements on the CsV3Sb5 single crystal. A first-order phase transition associated with orbital ordering is revealed by observing a sudden splitting of orbital shift in 51V NMR spectrum at the structural transition temperature Ts ~ 94 K. In contrast, the quadrupole splitting from a charge-density-wave (CDW) order on 51V NMR spectrum only appears gradually below Ts with a typical second-order transition behavior, suggesting that the CDW order is a secondary electronic order. Moreover, combined with 133Cs NMR spectrum, the present result also confirms a three-dimensional structural modulation with a 2ax2ax2c period. Above Ts, the temperature-dependent Knight shift and nuclear spin-lattice relaxation rate (1/T1) further indicate the existence of remarkable magnetic fluctuations from vanadium 3d orbitals, which are suppressed due to orbital ordering below Ts. The present results strongly support that, besides CDW order, the previously claimed density-wave-like transition also involves a dominant orbital order, suggesting a rich orbital physics in these kagome superconductors.