Microscopic evidence for long-range magnetic ordering in the 
ground quartet systems Sm
Al
(
: Ti, V, Cr)
Ito, Takashi
; Higemoto, Wataru
; Ninomiya, Kazuhiko; Sakai, Akito*; Nakatsuji, Satoru*
Recently,
Al
compounds (
: rare earth,
: transition metal) have attracted much attention due to interesting physical properties closely related to their caged-structure. Each
ion is confined in a Frank-Kasper cage consisting of 16 Al atoms and the large coordination number leads to strong
-
hybridization. In addition, the Frank-Kasper cage allows various multipole degrees of freedom for the
-electrons at low
because of a highly symmetric crystalline-electric-field (CEF). Among the
Al
series, Pr
Al
(
: Ti, V) and Sm
Al
(
: Ti, V, Cr) exhibit both these features. The
ground doublet systems Pr
Al
(
: Ti, V) show a phase transition at
= 2.0K (Ti) and 0.6K (V). The order parameter is believed to be an electric quadrupole active in the
subspace. A possibility of the quadrupole Kondo effect has been discussed based on characteristic
-dependence in specific heat, resistivity, and magnetic susceptibility. The
ground quartet systems Sm
Al
(
: Ti, V, Cr) also exhibit a phase transition at
= 6.4K (Ti), 2.3K (V), and 1.8K (Cr). A nuclear specific heat study in SmTi
Al
suggests that the primary order parameter is a magnetic dipole in spite of field-insensitive nature of the phase boundary. A possible importance of a secondarily ordered octupole moment was discussed. We here present a microscopic study of PrTi
Al
and Sm
Al
(
: Ti, V, Cr) using muon spin relaxation. In PrTi
Al
, no additional local field was observed in the ordered phase. This strongly supports the quadrupole ordering scenario. On the other hand, an appearance of a coherent local field was observed below
in Sm
Al
. This is consistent with the primary magnetic dipole ordering. The frequency distribution suggests that the magnetic structure is possibly different between the Sm
Al
compounds.