Anomalous properties of Ce-Cu- and Yb-Cu-based compounds

Abstract A survey of experimental findings for Ce-Cu- and Yb-Cu-based compounds is given. Most of these compounds exhibit unusual physical properties as a consequence of various competing mechanisms such as a magnetic interaction of the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yoshida type, Kondo interaction and crystal-field splitting. The ground-state properties are then dominated by whichever process surpasses the others. A successful description of the observed behaviour is possible in terms of the Coqblin-Schrieffer model, which is based on the Anderson Hamiltonian which is more general than the Kondo Hamiltonian.