The $5f$ electrons of uranium in the uranium mononitride (UN) compound are described in the literature as either localized or fully itinerant. Motivated by these contradictory statements, we studied low-temperature specific heat and high-field magnetization of single-crystalline UN in magnetic fields up to 9 and 65 T, respectively. Our detailed analysis of the magnetic contribution to the specific heat of UN revealed that its real ground state is complex and the $5f$ electrons seem to have a dual nature; i.e., they possess simultaneously local and itinerant characters in two substates. High-field experiments allowed us to construct a tentative magnetic phase diagram of UN with a metamagnetic transition from antiferromagnetism to ferrimagnetism at a magnetic field as high as 58 T at 2 K. Such a field only enables a reversal of 1 of the 12 antiferromagnetically coupled ferromagnetic layers in the direction of the magnetic field. Any further steplike transitions require application of ever higher magnetic fields, which is beyond the experimental possibilities. We show that the magnetic phase diagram can be successfully reproduced considering a layer model of the Ising spins. That model allows rough estimation of a phase transition into fully induced ferromagnetism at a field as high as about 258 T. It gives rise to a giant coupling between ferromagnetically ordered layers in UN. The obtained characteristics are presented, together with the results of recent x-ray photoemission spectroscopy and transport property measurements. They are analyzed and compared with a number of earlier experiments and band structure calculations that were performed for this compound and are widely described in the literature. We show that different experiments probe different substates of the uranium $5f$ electrons in UN (itinerant or localized), which supports our hypothesis on their dual nature.

• Received 18 July 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.94.224415