Pressure and linear heat capacity in the superconducting state of thoriated UBe13

Even well below Tc, the heavy-fermion superconductor (U,Th)Be13 has a large linear term in its specific heat. We show that under uniaxial pressure, the linear heat capacity increases in magnitude by more than a factor of two. The change is reversible and suggests that the linear term is an intrinsic property of the material. In addition, we find no evidence of hysteresis or of latent heat in the low-temperature and low-pressure portion of the phase diagram, showing that all transitions in this region are second order.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Low-energy excitations, symmetry breaking and specific heat in YbBiPt

The heavy fermion compound YbBiPt has a very large linear coefficient of specific heat {gamma} = 8 Jmol{sup {minus}1} K{sup {minus}2} and this is understood, to first order, in terms of the observed low-energy neutron scattering response. However, at low temperatures, symmetry forbidden splittings at 1 and 2 meV respectively are observed. These levels give good qualitative agreement with the measured specific heat, but poor quantitative agreement. Indeed, the specific heat drops more rapidly with temperature that can be accounted for assuming a temperature-independent density of states. The authors also present new low-temperature crystallographic data, which rule out any significant structural distortions

Nonmagnetic crystal-electric-field ground state in the heavy-fermion compound PrInAg{sub 2}

The authors have performed inelastic neutron scattering measurements that confirm that the crystal-electric-field split ground state in the heavy-fermion compound PrInAg{sub 2} is a nonmagnetic, non-Kramers doublet. This implies that a quadrupolar Kondo interaction is responsible for the enhanced thermodynamic properties observed at low temperatures. They also observe anomalous broadening of the inelastic peaks and suggest two possible causes for this broadening