Relativistic effects on the thermal expansion of the actinide elements

Abstract
The room-temperature linear thermal-expansion coefficient is calculated for the light actinides thorium, protactinium, uranium, neptunium, and plutonium for the fcc crystal structure. The relativistic spin-orbit interaction is included in these calculations. We show that the spin-orbit splitting of the 5f band gives rise to a considerable increase of the thermal expansion and to a large extent explains the observed anomalously large thermal expansion for the neptunium and plutonium metals.

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