Evidence for a Common Physical Description of Non-Fermi-Liquid Behavior in Chemically Substituted f-Electron Systems

The non-Fermi-liquid (NFL) behavior observed in the low temperature specific heat C(T) and magnetic susceptibility {chi}(T) of many chemically substituted f -electron systems is analyzed within the context of a recently developed theory based on Griffiths{close_quote} singularities. Measurements of C(T) and {chi}(T) in the systems Th{sub 1{minus}x}U {sub x}Pd{sub 2}Al{sub 3} , Y{sub 1{minus}x}U {sub x}Pd{sub 3} , and UCu{sub 5{minus}x }M{sub x} (M=Pd,thinspPt ) are found to be consistent with C(T)/T{proportional_to}{chi}(T){proportional_to}T{sup {minus}1+{lambda}} predicted by this model with {lambda}{lt}1 in the NFL regime. These results suggest that the NFL properties observed in a wide variety of disordered f -electron systems can be described within the context of a common physical picture. {copyright} {ital 1998} {ital The American Physical Society}