Evidence for a common physical description of non-fermi-liquid behavior in chemically substituted f-electron systems

The non-Fermi-liquid (NFL) behavior observed in the low temperature specific heat C(T) and magnetic susceptibility χ(T) of many chemically substituted f-electron systems is analyzed within the context of a recently developed theory based on Griffiths' singularities. Measurements of C(T) and χ(T) in the systems Th1-xUxPd2Al3, Y1-xUxPd3, and UCu5-xMx (M = Pd, Pt) are found to be consistent with C(T)/T∝χ(T)∝T-1+λ predicted by this model with λ < 1 in the NFL regime. These results suggest that the NFL properties observed in a wide variety of disordered f-electron systems can be described within the context of a common physical picture. © 1998 The American Physical Society.