11.

3 Kondo Lattice 639

a continuity for the T 2 TK behaviour from the dilute limit through

concentrated alloys to periodic heavy fermion systems [316].
Does this mean that the argument yielding (11.46) was flimsy, and CK
is a false concept? That would be unjust. Careful investigation confirms
that the large Kondo cloud is a reality [372]. However, the situation is
quite complicated. At finite T,the behaviour has to be described by the
simultaneous use of two length scales: &, and the thermal length scale
&. Furthermore, one has to be careful in interpreting measurements by
local probes like NMR, because they are sensitive to the details of the
internal structure of the Kondo singlet. Part of the story is that the
Kondo exchange polarizes the electron sea, and the resulting f-c spin
correlations have an oscillating cx cos k F r / r 2 character. A little later, we
will see that this gives rise to the RKKY interaction. The formation of
the Kondo cloud imposes a T-dependent envelope upon the oscillating
correlations; at low T, the remaining length scale is (K. We refer to
[372] and [45] for details.
The genuinity of the large Kondo cloud, juxtaposed with the survival
of Kondo features in concentrated alloys, is paradoxical. It suggests
that there should exist a theoretical framework in which typical large-T
manifestations of the Kondo effect follow from single-impurity Kondo
compensation for cimp< (a/<K)3, and they are not only not destroyed,
but conceivably even amplified by impurity-impurity interactions for
Cimp > ( a / < ~ )The
~ . behaviour is governed by a single energy scale TK
(which should not be much different from (11.35)), and scales with Cjmp.
The results of resistivity measurements on CezLal-zCu6, for which a
'T of 3.5-5K was suggested [316], may serve as illustration (Fig. 11.14).
The behaviour is unified and smooth37 for T > 10K. However, substan-
tial differences are seen at low T. Low-s samples follow by and large the
independent-impurity Kondo behaviour: the resistivity increases mono-
tonically with lowering T, saturating at T = 0 as described by (11.45).
On the other hand, concentrated samples, and most clearly pure CeCu6,
show a resistivity maximum, and after a steep decrease of p, follow the
+
Landau regime law p M po A*T2. In these systems, we may speak
about the emergence of low temperature phase coherence between the
37Thehumpy character of some Iowa curves is ascribed to crystal field excitations
which we cannot discuss here.