H. Abe and K. Ohshima
Institute of Applied Physics, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba 305, Japan
Photon Factory, National Laboratory of High Energy Physics,
Oho, Tsukuba 305, Japan
T. Nakajima
J. Low Temp.Phys., Vol.101, pp651-656 (1995).
The fundamental question of whether the ground state of the alkali metals is a nearly-free-electron state or a charge-density-wave (CDW) state has remained unresolved for over 30 years, ever since Overhauser first suggested the possibility of a CDW ground state in these metals in 1962. For K metal, no evidence for CDW satellites was seen in x-ray measurements at 10 K (You et al., 1987). We made x-ray measurements for a K single crystal down to 50 mK. We observed the satellite-like spots at lower temperatures below about 10 K. We also measured the temperature dependence of the magnetic susceptibility between 1.8 K and 300 K by a SQUID magnetometer. Below about 20 K the magnetic susceptibility starts to decrease and below about 10 K it decreases more rapidly with decreasing temperature. We will discuss the possibility of CDW in K metal from our experimental results.
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Last Modified: Dec. 21, 2009
