Dresden 2026 – scientific programme

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MA: Fachverband Magnetismus

MA 19: Frustrated Magnets I (joint session MA/TT)

MA 19.3: Talk

Tuesday, March 10, 2026, 10:00–10:15, POT/0361

Field-dependent CEF excitations in Ce₂Bi — •Nikolai Pavlovskii¹, Alexander Sukhanov², Anton Kulbakov¹, Michael Smidman³, Federico Mazza⁴, Darren Peets¹, Kaushick Parui¹, Ross Stewart⁵, Ross Piltz⁶, and Dmytro Inosov¹ — ¹TU Dresden, Germany — ²University of Augsburg, Germany — ³Zhejiang University, China — ⁴TU Vienna, Austria — ⁵ISIS, UK — ⁶ANSTO, Australia

Ce₂Bi is a cerium-based intermetallic compound where crystal-field (CEF) splitting and anisotropic magnetic interactions occur on comparable energy scales. To identify the relevant low-energy degrees of freedom, we investigate the field dependence of CEF-related excitations in single-crystalline Ce₂Bi using neutron-scattering techniques. Single-crystal diffraction establishes the crystallographic symmetry at the Ce site, providing the structural framework required for interpreting the magnetic excitations. The excitation spectrum shows a clear magnetic mode within the J = 5/2 manifold whose energy and intensity vary strongly with applied field. Crucially, the mode displays clear dispersion, demonstrating the presence of exchange interactions; as a result, what was previously interpreted as a localized CEF level is revealed to be a dispersive magnetic exciton. The field-induced evolution of this exciton constrains the mixing within the CEF manifold and the anisotropy of the ground-state Kramers doublet.

Keywords: cerium-based intermetallics; crystal-field excitations; neutron scattering