Electronic structure of UPd₃ - A localized f compound

Various experiments on UPd₃, the analogue of the heavy fermion superconductor, UPt₃, have ascertained that there are two f electrons per U which are localized in a magnetic singlet state. Recently, both photoemission (PES) and de Haas-van Alphen (dHvA) experiments have been reported on UPd₃. To complement this experimental work, local density energy band calculations have been performed on UPd₃ where the f electrons have been treated as core states. The resulting density of states is found to be in good agreement with photoemission data. The theoretical Fermi surface is found to be more complex than current dHvA data indicate, but one can still unambiguously assign theoretical extremal orbits to the experimental data. Thus again, the data is consistent with a local f² configuration. Since the band calculations can explain the dHvA data in heavy fermion UPt₃ with the f electrons treated as band states, one finds that the Kohn-Sham ansatz for treating the f electrons as Bloch states breaks down between these two cases. This finding is confirmed by recent U(Pd_xPt_3-x) alloy experiments which show a sudden decrease in the specific heat coefficient when alloying these two compounds.