Thermodynamic properties of samarium hexaboride

Summary form only given. The heavy fermion semiconductor samarium hexaboride is the first compound in which the phenomenon of intermediate valence has been seen directly by X-ray absorption, but the theory which explains all properties of this compound within a unified physical model remains elusive in spite of unceasing efforts of theoreticians and experimentalists. SmB/sub 6/ may be modeled as an indirect hybridization gap semiconductor, in which gap features are identified as spin exciton excitations, which are induced by residual anti-ferro magnetic interaction between the renormalized quasi-particles. In this work we consider the Falicov-Kimball model to study the thermodynamic properties of SmB/sub 6/. We study the temperature dependence of the specific heat, entropy, susceptibility, and of the correlation functions of the one-dimensional half-filled-band Falicov-Kimball model.