title: Nernst effect of the intermediate valence compound YbAl3: revisiting the thermoelectric properties.
abstract: The Nernst effect and thermopower of the prototypical Yb-based intermediate valence compound YbAl(3) were investigated. Different to the thermopower whose absolute values are enhanced with increasing temperature and assume a broad maximum at 175 K, the Nernst coefficient of YbAl(3) is enhanced only below T ≈ 75 K. While the two quantities in the heavy-fermion compound CeCu(2)Si(2) were recently found to be related by the anomalous Hall mobility due to the local asymmetric Kondo scattering, this theorem fails when being applied to YbAl(3). Rather, the thermopower of YbAl(3) is well described by a simple narrow-band model. We discuss the reason for this in terms of the intermediate valence nature of YbAl(3) that is conceptually different from the local Kondo physics.
authors.affiliation: College of Physics, Jilin University, Changchun 130023, People's Republic of China. Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Beipei
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.forename: Jiahao
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Peijie
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: Wenquan
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Nanlin
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Frank
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Steglich