Chemical disorder induced electronic orders in correlated metals

In strongly correlated metals, long-range magnetic order is sometimes found only upon introduction of a minute amount of disordered non-magnetic 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 re-established. 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.