The Crystal Field Scheme of PrCu₆ as Obtained by Inelastic Neutron Scattering

抄録

The inelastic neutron scattering was studied in both PrCu₆ and the reference system LaCu₆ in order to isolate the magnetic CF-transitions in orthorombic PrCu₆. Ten CF-transitions could easily be resolved, leading to a CF-scheme with two singlets forming a nearly doubly degenerate groundstate (Δ≈0.02 meV) without any coupling through a magnetic dipole matrix element (this doublet shows no quasielastic scattering). The first excited state is found to be 1.48 meV above that quasi-doublet ground state and the overall splitting comes out to be 8.95 meV. The static susceptibility calculated from this CF-scheme is in good agreement with the measured one, which is also presented in this paper.