Spin-excitons in heavy-fermion semimetals

Abstract Spin-excitons are sharp and dispersive magnetic fluctuations in paramagnetic semiconductors where the dispersion relation lies within the semiconducting gap. Spin-excitons are found in the vicinity of magnetic quantum critical points in semiconductors, much the same as antiparamagnons are precursor fluctuations for quantum critical points in metals. Here we show that this concept of spin-exciton excitations can be extended to heavy-fermion semimetals and provides a natural explanation of the magnetic modes found by inelastic neutron scattering experiments on paramagnetic CeFe2Al10.