Investigation of the magnetic hyperfine field at sup(140)Ce on Gd sites in GdCosub(2) compound

Abstract

Perturbed angular correlation experiments on 140LaY140Ce probes substituting for the Gd positions on GdCo2 demonstrate that the magnetic hyperfine field (MHF) on Ce atoms follows an expected Brillouin function but with a substantially reduced saturation value as compared with the MHF acting on free Ce+3 ions. The results were interpreted with the aid of first principles electronic structure calculations showing that the reduced value of the MHF is a consequence of a small orbital contribution to the MHF which was attributed to the de-localization of the Ce 4f electronic state.