Magnetic Study on Kondo Semiconductor CeNiSn

There are two standpoints to explain the formation of the peak of magnetic susceptibility versus temperature in CeNiSn. One is the presence of the pseudo-gapped density of states (DOS) while the other is the development of an antiferromagnetic correlation. To check which one is more reasonable, an experiment is designed on measuring magnetic susceptibility under different magnetic fields. It is found that magnetic field can shift the peak of the magnetic susceptibility to lower temperatures while by calculation the presence of the pseudo-gapped DOS cannot shift the peak, which gives another evidence of the existence of antiferromagnetic correlations and is discussed in the light of some recent theoretical model.