Chemical disorder induced electronic orders in correlated metals: Rekindled failed-order scenario

In strongly correlated metals, long-range magnetic order is sometimes found only upon introduction of a minute amount of disordered nonmagnetic impurities to the unordered clean samples. To explain such anti-intuitive behavior, we propose a ``rekindled failed-order'' scenario of inducing electronic (magnetic, orbital, or charge) order via chemical or lattice disorder in systems with coexisting local moments and itinerant carriers. By disrupting the damaging long-range quantum fluctuation originating from the itinerant carriers, the electronic order preferred by the local moment can be reestablished. We demonstrate this mechanism using a realistic spin-fermion model and show that the magnetic order can indeed be recovered as a result of enhanced disorder once the length scale of phase coherence of the itinerant carriers becomes shorter than a critical value. The proposed simple idea has a general applicability to strongly correlated metals, and it showcases the rich physics resulting from interplay between mechanisms of multiple length scales.