Experimental evidence for many-body effects in dilute alloys

The macroscopic and local properties of 3d transition metal impurities in normal metals are reviewed and compared with the theoretical situation in this field.

The parameters of the Anderson and s-d exchange models are derived from direct and indirect experimental data using as a guide the Hartree-Fock approximation of the non-degenerate Anderson model. The basic observations about the magnetic-non-magnetic transition, and the behaviour of the magnetic, thermal and transport properties when going through the transition region are demonstrated for specific examples. A detailed comparison between the present status of theory and experiment is performed by inspecting the large body of experimental data of two typical alloys, which served as testing materials for the development of the existing theories. CuFe is often regarded as a typical ‘yes moment’ system, and the experiments are therefore compared with the predictions based on the s-d exchange model; in the case of AlMn, the spin-fluctuation concept was chosen as a theoretical basis. It is shown that various approaches of the models fail to describe the fine experimental details. Evidence is presented which calls for a unified theory with no distinction between magnetic (Kondo-type) and non-magnetic (spin-fluctuation) alloys. It is suggested that the range of applicability of a model depends not only on the basic parameters of the dilute alloy but on the temperature, too, and the question of the relevance of the models to the actual state of affairs is to be answered by inspecting the temperature regions where the various approximations of the models are expected to work; the T≥T_K properties are compared with the Kondo approach, the Tˇ-T_K properties with the spin fluctuation model, although in the latter case the analysis is based on the concept of a narrow resonance level, which is not a feature of the spin-fluctuation concept only.

Finally, the basic experimental facts and indications are absorbed into a phenomenological model, which describes both the single-particle resonances and the many-body effects involved in resonance formation in classical dilute alloys.