Self-consistent alloy treatment of the periodic anderson model: Susceptibility and specific heat of intermediate valence compounds

To describe the electronic properties of mixed valence compounds we study the periodic Anderson model within the frame of the alloy analog approximation. In this approach the model Hamiltonian is replaced by the sum of two single-particle alloy Hamiltonians the parameters of which have to be determined self-consistently. The alloy problem is solved within the coherent potential approximation. In contrast to other treatments of the periodic Anderson model this approximation scheme is exact in both trivially solvable limits of vanishing hybridization and Coulomb repulsion, respectively. For model parameters corresponding to a mixed valence situation only nonmagnetic solutions of the self-consistency equations exist. After discussing the limit of small hybridization analytically we numerically calculate the magnetic susceptibility and the electronic specific heat as a function of temperature for realistic values of the hybridization and Coulomb repulsion. The results are in very good qualitative agreement with experimental data.Work performed within the research program of the Sonderforschungsbereich 125 Aachen/Jülich/Köln