Crystal fields in UO2 - revisited

We performed inelastic neutron scattering (INS) in order to re-investigate the crystal-field ground state and the level splitting in UO{sub 2}. Previous INS studies on UO{sub 2} by Amorelli et al. [Physical Review B 15, 1989, 1856] uncovered four excitations at low temperatures in the 150-180 meV range. Considering the dipole-allowed transitions, only three of these transitions could be explained by the published crystal-field model. Our INS results on a different UO{sub 2} sample revealed that the unaccounted peak at about 180 meV is a spurious one, and thus not intrinsic to UO{sub 2}. In good agreement with Amoretti's results, we corroborated that the ground-state of UO{sub 2} is the {Lambda}{sub 5} triplet, and we computed that the fourth- and six-order crystal field parameters are V{sub 4} = -116 meV and V{sub 6} = 26 meV, respectively. We also studied the INS response of the non-magnetic U{sub 0.4}Th{sub 0.6}O{sub 2}. The splitting for this thorium-doped compound is similar to the one of UO{sub 2}, which orders antiferromagnetically at low temperatures. Therefore, we can conclude that magnetic interactions only weakly perturb the energy level splitting, which is dominated by strong crystal fields.