Two energy scales and slow crossover in YbAl<inf>3</inf>

Abstract

We present results for YbAl3 which show that the susceptibility, 4f occupation number and the entropy exhibit a slow crossover between the Fermi liquid and local moment regimes. Both the susceptibility and the linear specific heat coefficient exhibit low temperature peaks that imply that in addition to the Kondo scale (TK≈ 500K) there is a second low temperature scale (Tcoh≈ 50K) for the onset of coherence. We discuss these results in the context of the Anderson lattice in the limit of low conduction electron density. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.