SPECIFIC-HEAT AND SUSCEPTIBILITY OF PRNI2

The specific heat of the cubic PrNi2, YNi2 and LuNi2 intermetallic com pounds has been measured in magnetic fields up to 11 T in the temperat ure range 1.6-80 K and in zero field up to room temperature. The compa rison of the measured susceptibility data with those of the static cry stal field calculation yields an overall agreement but allows no decis ion with respect to a singlet or doublet ground state. Our specific he at data show that the singlet GAMMA1 is the ground state in PrNi2. The excess specific heat observed below 20 K can be attributed to a broad ening of the first excited level.