Absence of Magnetic Moments in Plutonium
By J. Lashley, A. Lawson, R. McQueeney, G. Lander. 2004
156 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Many theories published in the last decade propose that either ordered or disordered local moments are present in elemental plutonium at low temperatures. We present new experimental data and review previous experimental results. None of the experiments provide any evidence for ordered or disordered magnetic moments (either static or dynamic) in plutonium at low temperatures, in either the $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ or $\ensuremath{\delta}$ phases. The experiments presented and discussed are magnetic susceptibility, electrical resistivity, nuclear magnetic resonance, specific heat, and both elastic and inelastic neutron scattering. Many recent calculations correctly predict experimentally observed atomic volumes, including that of $\ensuremath{\delta}$-Pu. These calculations achieve observed densities by the localization of electrons, which then give rise to magnetic moments. However, localized magnetic moments have never been observed experimentally in Pu. A theory is needed that is in agreement with all the experimental observations. Two theories are discussed that might provide understanding of the ensemble of unusual properties of Pu, including the absence of experimental evidence for localized magnetic moments; an issue that has persisted for over 50 years.
Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Condensed Matter Physics, Inorganic Chemistry
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a8f9652a1aaf78e4a0ca8e7125ce17bcf8ea5c2b
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In Condensed Matter Physics
Citations in the corpus
- Nature of the 5f states in actinide metals (2008, background): “While magnetism in actinide compounds is widely studied and accepted Santini et al., 1999 , magnetism in pure Pu is often debated, even though there is no convincing experimental evidence of moments in any of the six allotropic phases of the metal Lashley et al., 2005; Heffner et al., 2006 .”