Kondo behavior, ferromagnetic correlations, and crystal fields in the heavy-fermion compounds Ce3X (X = In, Sn).

We report measurements of inelastic neutron scattering, magnetic susceptibility, magnetization, and the magnetic field dependence of the specific heat for the heavy Fermion compounds Ce3In and Ce3Sn. The neutron scattering results show that the excited crystal field levels have energies E1=13.2 meV, E2=44.8 meV for Ce3In and E1=18.5 meV, E2=36.1 meV for Ce3Sn. The Kondo temperature deduced from the quasielastic linewidth is 17 K for Ce3In and 40 K for Ce3Sn. The low-temperature behavior of the specific heat, magnetization, and susceptibility cannot be well described by J=1/2 Kondo physics alone, but require calculations that include contributions from the Kondo effect, broadened crystal fields, and ferromagnetic correlations, all of which are known to be important in these compounds. We find that in Ce3In the ferromagnetic fluctuation makes a 10%–15% contribution to the ground state doublet entropy and magnetization. The large specific heat coefficient γ in this heavy fermion system thus arises more from the ferromagnetic correlations than from the Kondo behavior. © 2010, American Physical Society

Keywords

Kondo effect, Ferromagnetism, Crystal field, Inelastic scattering, Magnetic susceptibility, Correlations

Citation

Wang, C. H., Lawrence, J. M., Christianson, A. D., Goremychkin, E. A., Fanelli, V. R., Gofryk, K., Bauer, E. D., Ronning, F., Thompson, J. D., de souza, N. R., Kolesnikov, A. I., & Littrell, K. C. (2010). Kondo behavior, ferromagnetic correlations, and crystal fields in the heavy-fermion compounds Ce3X (X = In, Sn). Physical Review B, 81(23), 235132. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.81.235132