The Investigation of the Crystalline Electric Field of CeCu2 and CeCu6

We performed inelastic neutron scattering experiments employing polarized neutrons with polarization analysis on CeCu2 and CeCu6 single crystals to study the magnetic excitation spectra originating from crystalline electric field (CEF) transitions. From these measurements information about the individual transition matrix elements within and between the different CEF levels of the Ce 3+ (J = 5/2) ground state multiplet are obtained. This leads in the case of CeCu2 to a set of crystal field parameters, which is in agreement with the results of microscopic as well as macroscopic measurements. For CeCu6 our results confirm the existence of the excited crystal field levels positioned at around 7 and 13 meV.