The Low-Temperature Electronic Specific Heats of Disordered Ag-Au Alloys, Revisited

TL;DR

This paper revisits the low-temperature electronic specific heats of disordered Ag-Au alloys, aiming to clarify longstanding experimental anomalies using new analytical approaches.

Contribution

It provides a reanalysis of experimental data on Ag-Au alloys' electronic specific heat, offering new insights into their behavior at low temperatures.

Findings

Reconfirmation of the parabolic behavior of the electronic specific heat coefficient with alloy concentration.

Identification of potential factors influencing deviations from expected linear interpolation.

Enhanced understanding of disordered alloy thermodynamics at low temperatures.

Abstract

Disordered alloys of silver and gold have been in the interest of the condensed matter community for decades since they are the prototype of the ideal solid solution due to the chemical similarity of their constituents and due to their potential industrial applications. Although they are considered well-known materials, surprises have appeared that have not been well understood despite several studies performed. One example are the experimental results of the electronic specific heat at low temperatures of disordered Ag-Au alloys. In 1966, Green and Valladares [Phys. Rev. 142, 379 (1966)] conducted experimental studies of $\gamma$, the coefficient of the temperature in the expression for the electronic specific heat at low temperatures, finding a parabolic behavior as a function of the concentration, when a linear interpolation between the pure-element values was expected. This detonated several ulterior experiments that corroborated this parabolic behavior, and theoretical attempts followed that did not satisfactorily succeed at the explanation. It is our hope that this paper will contribute to the understanding of the experimental results; old problems can be reanalyzed with the help of new tools.