Pressure effects on Ce-based Kondo approximant crystal

Abstract

The Ag-In-Ce alloy is an approximant crystal to a Tsai-type quasicrystal and exhibits heavy-fermion (Kondo) physics. This new type of Kondo material exhibits spin-glass ordering below the freezing temperature Tf ∼ 0.3 K at ambient pressure. Here we investigated the effect of hydrostatic pressure on the Ag-In-Ce alloy. Spin-glass features, such as the frequency-dependent cusp near Tf in the ac magnetic susceptibility curve, were observed even under external pressure. In addition, the C/T value (where C is the specific heat) increased with decreasing temperature and exhibited a broad peak above Tf. The Tf increased as the pressure increased up to its highest value in the experiment (approximately 2.6 GPa).