Disorder dependence of the ferromagnetic quantum phase transition

Y. Sang, D. Belitz, T. R. Kirkpatrick

Published 2014-06-22, updated 2014-06-26Version 2

We quantitatively discuss the influence of quenched disorder on the ferromagnetic quantum phase transition in metals, using a theory that describes the coupling of the magnetization to gapless fermionic excitations. In clean systems, the transition is first order below a tricritical temperature T_tc. Quenched disorder is predicted to suppress T_tc until it vanishes for residual resistivities rho_0 on the order of several microOhmcm for typical quantum ferromagnets. We discuss experiments that allow to distinguish the mechanism considered from other possible realizations of a first-order transition.