A determination of the crystal field has been made in the hexagonal co
mpound PrGa2 starting from a careful joint analysis of specific heat,
magnetic susceptibility and inelastic neutron scattering experiments.
The ground state consists of one singlet and one doublet very close to
each other, which explains the existence of a collinear long period-a
ntiphase magnetic structure at low temperature. From these crystal fie
ld parameters, a quantitative analysis of the complex magnetic propert
ies of the ordered phase has been performed by using a self-consistent
periodic-field model. In particular, evidence of a field transition t
owards a fan magnetic structure within the basal plane has been found
during the magnetization process along the 120! axis at 5 K. Moreover
, as expected, the specific heat variation is strongly affected by the
modulated character of the magnetic arrangement below T(N) = 7.2 K.