heavy-fermion system

heavy-fermion system

[‚hev·ē ′fər·mē‚än ‚sis·təm] (solid-state physics) A lanthanide-based or actinide-based intermetallic compound in which the low-energy excitations (quasiparticles) of the conduction electron system have effective masses at low temperatures that are several hundred times the free-electron mass.