Abstract
A favored interpretation of the phase transition in cerium postulates the transformation of the localized state in -Ce to a weakly correlated itinerant band in -Ce. However, results of high-energy neutron inelastic scattering measurements, presented here, show clearly that the magnetic susceptibility response from -Ce follows the form factor despite the large, 30-fold, increase in its spectral width relative to that in -Ce. This observation provides, for the first time, indisputable evidence for the localized character of the state in the phase. The present findings appear consistent with recent calculations combining dynamical mean-field theory with the local density approximation that indicate a strongly correlated state in -Ce. The localized state is also fundamental to the Kondo volume collapse theories for the phase transition in cerium.
- Received 3 March 2005
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.95.256403
©2005 American Physical Society