Hybridization gap and anisotropic far-infrared optical conductivity of URu2Si2

We performed far-infrared optical spectroscopy measurements on the heavy fermion compound URu2Si2 as a function of temperature. The light's electric field was applied along the a or c axis of the tetragonal structure. We show that in addition to a pronounced anisotropy, the optical conductivity exhibits for both axis a partial suppression of spectral weight around 12 meV and below 30 K. We attribute these observations to a change in the band structure below 30 K. However, since these changes have no noticeable impact on the entropy nor on the DC transport properties, we suggest that this is a crossover phenomenon rather than a thermodynamic phase transition.