title: Note: Relaxation heat capacity measurements at low temperatures: dealing with nuclear contribution.
abstract: Nuclear heat capacity is a serious obstacle in low temperature heat capacity measurements by a relaxation technique. However, this method allows an experimenter to measure the electronic heat capacity directly, if the ratio of electronic heat capacity to the conductance of the calorimeter is sufficiently small in comparison with nuclear-spin relaxation times. This is because the initial rate of a temperature decay is always determined by the electronic degrees of freedom and does not depend on nuclear degrees of freedom. This previously unrecognized feature is clearly demonstrated through measurements of Cu in external magnetic fields.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Center for Ultralow Temperature Research, University of Florida, Gainesville, 32611-8440, USA. andraka@phys.ufl.edu
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Andraka
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Takano