Electronic and magnetic properties of a heavy fermion compound YbPd

The electronic and magnetic properties of YbPd are investigated by band structure calculation based on the density functional theory within LDA, LDA + U, and fully relativistic scheme. The fully relativistic band structure scheme shows that spin-orbit coupling splits the 4f states into two manifolds, the 4f(7/2) and the 4f(5/2) multiplet. When the Coulomb potential is added to the Yb 4f orbitals, the degeneracy between the different f orbitals would be lifted and they are split into lower Hubbard bands and upper Hubbard bands. The quasiparticle mass enhancement inferred by comparing gamma to the DOS at the Fermi level indicates that YbPd is highly enhanced. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.