In the heavy-fermion metal CePdAl long-range antiferromagnetic order coexists with geometric frustration of one third of the Ce moments. At low temperatures the Kondo effect tends to screen the frustrated moments. We use magnetic fields B to suppress the Kondo screening and study the magnetic phase diagram and the evolution of the entropy with B employing thermodynamic probes. We estimate the frustration by introducing a definition of the frustration parameter based on the enhanced entropy, a fundamental feature of frustrated systems. In the field range where the Kondo screening is suppressed the liberated moments tend to maximize the magnetic entropy and strongly enhance the frustration. Based on our experiments, this field range may be a promising candidate to search for a quantum spin liquid.
@article{arxiv.1612.03104,
title = {Entropy evolution in the magnetic phases of partially frustrated CePdAl},
author = {Stefan Lucas and Kai Grube and Chien-Lung Huang and Akito Sakai and Sarah Wunderlich and Elizabeth Lauren Green and Joachim Wosnitza and Veronika Fritsch and Philipp Gegenwart and Oliver Stockert and Hilbert v. Löhneysen},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.03104},
year = {2017}
}