Magnetoelastic effects in UCoAl

We report on strongly anisotropic thermal expansion (TE) and magnetostriction (MS) of the itinerant 5f-electron metamagnet UCoAl measured along the principal crystallographic directions (the a- and c-axis, respectively) of a single crystal at temperatures down to 2 K and magnetic fields up to 14 T applied along the c-axis. The MS (negative along the a-axis and positive in perpendicular direction) and magnetization curves at 2 K consistently reflect the metamagnetic transition (MT) at 0.62 T with significant hysteresis ∼0.03 T. The MS between 0 and 14 T is notable up to ∼70 K as a consequence of spin fluctuations. The relationship with other properties, e.g. specific heat is discussed