Magnetic domains and frustration in metallic CePdAl

Magnetic frustration is an exciting topic in condensed matter physics, since it can lead to new ground states of materials, e.g. a spin liquid or spin glass state. Effects of magnetic frustration have been investigated intensively for insulating materials. However, the existence of magnetic frustration in metallic systems is still under debate. CePdAl is a metallic Kondo system, where geometric magnetic frustration arises from the formation of Ce ions on a distorted Kagome lattice. Neutron scattering experiments revealed, that only two thirds of the magnetic Ce moments order antiferromagnetically below T_N=2.7 K, whereas the other third remains mainly disordered. Thermodynamic as well as neutron scattering measurements are presented to verify the existence of partial magnetic frustration in CePdAl. Recently neutron diffraction experiments under magnetic fields applied along two orthogonal directions in the magnetically hard basal plane were performed. They show opposite effects on the magnetic intensity of a selected magnetic domain depending on the field direction with respect to the propagation vector. If this is only an effect of different domain population or also due to a change in magnetic frustration shall be discussed.