628 Ch.

11 Mixed Valence and Heavy Fermions

the PAM. Indeed, such was our explanation for the mass enhancement
observed in the Lal-,Sr,TiOs system, and we would not hesitate to
read off m*/m x 3 from Fig. 10.5. There may be other d-electron
systems which show a larger mass enhancement but the fact remains
that as a rule, transition metal compounds do not reach even the level
of moderate heaviness by the standard of f-electron systems. We may
think of some arguments why this should be the case. In terms of
Hubbard-like models, 1-n << 1requires a fine-tuning of the composition
which may be difficult to achieve. Also, if the system is on the verge of
a Mott transition, localization due to disorder is likely to set in.

11.3 Kondo Lattice

Our picture of the nearly integral valent regime with n f M 1 is depicted
in Fig. 11.10: for v = 0, the decoupled system would consist of an ar-
ray of f 1 sites, and a conduction band (light) Fermi sea with c: > c ~ .
Switching on a weak hybridization, it gives rise to a small admixture of
f o character. The situation is akin to that found for the strongly inter-
acting half-filled Hubbard band which consists almost exclusively of c1
sites, only the hopping matrix elements connecting to the upper Hub-
bard subband give a small fluctuating c2-co component (see Sec. 5.1).
We have seen how this permits description in terms of an effective spin
model (the Heisenberg model), in which spin-spin interaction is driven
by virtual charge fluctuations.
Similarly, in the present case f 1 sites are bearing uncompensated
spins2', thus it should be possible to construct an effective Hamiltonian
describing an array of localized f-spins, interacting with a c-electron
Fermi sea.
To guess what this Hamiltonian may look like, let us begin to collect
its pieces. An ?-spin f-electron is taken by hybridization from site j to

28Trying to translate our model results into the language of realistic situations, we
may think of trivalent Ce3+ with a doubly degenerate r 7 ground state where the two
states are not literally S = f 1 / 2 states, but the time-reversed J = 5/2 states given
in (3.131). - If a U-based system is nearly tetravalent, it consists of 5 f 2 shells which
may have the r3 doublet ground state. Since r3 is a pure quadrupolar doublet, the
effective interaction should be a quadrupolequadrupole coupling [73].