Band-filling effects on the Kondo-lattice properties

TL;DR

This paper investigates how band-filling affects the magnetic and Kondo properties of a lattice with localized spins, revealing a phase transition influenced by electron density and intersite interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a mean-field theoretical framework for analyzing Kondo-lattice models with non-integer band filling, highlighting the exhaustion problem and phase diagram.

Findings

Kondo temperature varies with intersite interaction and band filling.

Kondo effect can abruptly vanish at low band filling or strong intersite coupling.

Phase diagram maps the conditions for magnetic and Kondo phases.

Abstract

We present theoretical results for a Kondo-lattice model with spin-1/2 localized moments, including both the intrasite Kondo coupling and an intersite antiferromagnetic exchange interaction, treated within an extended mean-field approximation. We describe here the case of a non-integer conduction-band filling for which an ``exhaustion'' problem arises when the number of conduction electrons is not large enough to screen all the lattice spins. This is best seen in the computed magnetic susceptibility. The Kondo temperature so obtained is different from the single-impurity one, and increases for small values of the intersite interaction, but the Kondo-effect disappears abruptly for low band filling and/or strong intersite coupling; a phase diagram is presented as a function of both parameters. A discussion of experimental results on cerium Kondo compounds is also given.