Charge order in Kondo lattice systems

Charge order is a commonly observed phenomenon in strongly correlated materials. However, most theories are based on a repulsive intersite Coulomb interaction in order to explain charge order. Here we show that only due to local interactions, charge order is favorable in heavy fermion systems at quarter filling. The driving force is the Kondo effect, which leads to a nonlinear dependence on the filling of the lattice site for the energy gain. We use dynamical mean field theory combined with numerical renormalization group to demonstrate the existence of charge order at quarter filling for a Kondo lattice model.