Large orbital magnetic moment and its quenching in the itinerant uranium intermetallic compounds UGa (=Ni, Pd, Pt)

Kaneko, Koji; Metoki, Naoto   ; Bernhoeft, N.*; Lander, G. H.; Ishii, Yoshinobu; Ikeda, Shugo; Tokiwa, Yoshifumi; Haga, Yoshinori   ; Onuki, Yoshichika

The crystal structure, lattice strain due to the antiferromagnetic ordering and magnetic form factor in the itinerant 5 compounds UTGa (T: Ni, Pd, Pt) have been studied by neutron scattering. High-resolution powder diffraction revealed that the tetragonality of the U-Ga layers increases with the ionic radius of the transition metal element T. The observed antiferromagnetic reflections can be well explained with the Nel-type structure for UNiGa, whereas UPtGa has the antiferromagnetic stacking of the ferromagnetically ordered uranium moments in the -plane. The orbital contributions in the magnetic form factor are reduced from the free ion value, especially for UNiGa. This suppression shows a strong correlation with the bulk magnetic susceptibility. The tetragonality of the U-Ga layers is a sensitive measure of the nearest neighbour interaction, the lattice anomaly, and the orbital contribution and suggests that orbital degrees of freedom may play an important role for the magnetic properties in these itinerant 5 antiferromagnets.