Anisotropic physical properties of PrRhAl$_4$Si$_2$ single crystal a non-magnetic singlet ground state compound

摘要

We have grown the single crystal of PrRhAl$_4$Si$_2$, which crystallizes inthe tetragonal crystal structure. From the low temperature physical propertymeasurements like, magnetic susceptibility, magnetization, heat capacity andelectrical resistivity, we found that this compound does not show any magneticordering down to 70~mK. Our crystal field calculations on the magneticsusceptibility and specific heat measurements reveal that the 9-fold degenerate$(2J+1)$ levels of Pr atom in PrRhAl$_4$Si$_2$, splits into 7 levels, with asinglet ground state and a well separated excited doublet state at 123~K, witha overall level splitting energy of 320~K.