Probing hybridization strength and homogeneity of valence mixing in magnetically-ordered, intermediate-valence EuCu2(SixGe1-x)2.

DOI

The compounds we want to study belong to the well-known tetragonal RM2X2 family (R: rare earth, M: d element, X: Ge, Si). In EuCu2(SixGe1-x)2, the Eu valence changes, as a function of the Si concentration x, from close to 2+ (magnetic, 4f7) for x = 0 to strongly intermediate, nonmagnetic above xc = 0.65. In the vicinity of xc, the system exhibits Kondo effect and heavy-fermion properties, which are quite unusual for Eu. We propose to probe the sd-f hybridization in these materials by studying its effects on the crystal-field scheme of Er impurities, which can sense the delocalization of 4f electrons. Another goal is to check the absence of ionic Eu3+ excitations in Ge-rich compounds despite the sizable deviation from the 2+ valence. The measurements can be done on MARI with sufficiently thin samples and using a low enough Er concentration so as not to affect the properties of the host.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.67768415
Metadata Access https://icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk/oaipmh/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=oai:icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk:inv/67768415
Provenance
Creator Dr Jean-Michel Mignot; Dr Marina Ganeva; Dr Kirill Nemkovskiy; Professor Pavel Alekseev; Dr Duc Le
Publisher ISIS Neutron and Muon Source
Publication Year 2018
Rights CC-BY Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Contact isisdata(at)stfc.ac.uk
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Discipline Natural Sciences; Physics
Temporal Coverage Begin 2015-11-30T08:00:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2015-12-08T08:00:00Z