Crystal electric field and local symmetry in rare-earth amorphous alloys

Abstract

Amorphous alloys containing small concentrations of rare earths exhibit very different magnetic properties for Pr (strong singlet ground state effects), Tm (smaller singlet effects), and Dy or Er (small deviations from the free ion behavior). All the experimental results for different rare earths in a given host can be accounted for by a unique distribution of nonuniaxial quadratic crystal fields. The distribution of local symmetries is not consistent with random dense packing of hard spheres and suggests well defined local angular correlations.