Low-temperature physical properties of heavy-fermion CeRh ₂Sn₂

Intermetallic f-electron compounds comprising rare earth elements Ce or Yb are known to exhibit a variety of complex electronic and magnetic features that originate essentially from hybridization between localized f-electrons and conduction electrons. The isostructural tetragonal stannide series CeM ₂ Sn₂ in which M is a d-electron element capture the essential features of the strongly correlated electron class of systems in which the on-site Kondo exchange competes with long-range magnetic interactions. Cerium-based antiferromagnetic order is prevalent among compounds in the series at temperatures typically below about 4 K, but with a particularly large enhancement of the electronic specific heat in the neighborhood of T _N. The title compound of this study is CeRh₂Sn ₂, and we present here results of low-temperature studies of the specific heat and magnetic susceptibility in order to map its low-temperature behaviour.