Electrical resistivity of delta phase plutonium alloys

ABSTRACT

I present an analysis of the temperature dependence of the electrical resistivity of δ-phase plutonium alloys. I find that the resistivity is mainly proportional to the electronic Kondo heat capacity, with an additional term, linear in temperature, that is correlated with the absolute low-temperature resistivity. This indicates a so-called Mooij correlation, which is often observed in disordered materials. These two terms can be understood together as different contributions to the resistivity, proportional to their respective electronic densities of states. The method presented in this paper provides a simple means of quantifying such resistivity data, and the data for a large number of δ-phase plutonium alloys have been fitted with only four parameters each.

KEYWORDS:

• Plutonium
• electrical resistivity
• actinides
• electronic transport
• heavy-fermion metals

Acknowledgments

I thank J. A. Roberts, M. F. Stevens, J. C. Lashley, G. H. Lander and two anonymous referees for their comments on the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).