UC Irvine

The new massive-electron system YbBiPt has been studied by means of neutron inelastic scattering at temperatures between 3.3 and 77 K, using the crystal-analyser spectrometer LAM-40. Crystal field excitations have been observed at approximately 6 meV and at very low energy. There is also significant quasielastic scattering and the higher-energy level softens slightly with increasing temperature. Although these observations are in qualitative agreement with the bulk susceptibility measurements, our data suggest that the first excited crystal-field level is much lower in energy than had been deduced from bulk measurements. © 1993.