High pressure effects on U L-3 x-ray absorption in partial fluorescence yield mode and single crystal x-ray diffraction in the heavy fermion compound UCd11

摘要

We report a study of high pressure x-ray absorption (XAS) performed in the partial fluorescence yield mode (PFY) at the U L-3 edge (0-28.2 GPa) and single crystal x-ray diffraction (SXD) (0-20 GPa) on the UCd11 heavy fermion compound at room temperature. Under compression, the PFY-XAS results show that the white line is shifted by +4.1(3) eV at the highest applied pressure of 28.2 GPa indicating delocalization of the 5f electrons. The increase in full width at half maxima and decrease in relative amplitude of the white line with respect to the edge jump point towards 6d band broadening under high pressure.