On the Renormalization of Collective Excitations in Intermediate Valence Metals

Abstract

AbstractThe experimentally known minimum of the longitudinal sound velocity in the vicinity of the electronic phase transition is explained for metals with intermediate valence. It is shown that the density of states on the Fermi surface increases due to s‐fhybridization. This increase givesrise to screening of the electron‐ion interaction and hence the longitudinal sound velocity is reduced. The theoretical calculation is compared with experimental data for the γ‐α transition in Ce. It is also shown that the hybridization does not reproduce the existence of the recently proposed acoustic plasmon branch in intermediate valence metals.