Heat capacity of gadolinium near the Curie temperature.

Abstract

High-resoln. ac calorimetric data near the Curie point are reported for several single crystals of gadolinium. The crit. temp. and the shape of the heat-capacity curve near Tc both depend on the sample-prepn. procedure, including heat treatments. The heat-capacity data are analyzed in terms of predictions of renormalization-group theory. This anal. shows that the crit. behavior of Gd is consistent with the picture of a complex crit. behavior consisting of a series of crossovers dictated by the interplay between short-range and magnetic-dipolar interactions.