Spin fluctuations and magnetic order in the heavy fermion compound CePt2Sn2

We present zero and longitudinal field μSR measurements of single crystal and polycrystalline specimens of the heavy fermion compound CePt2Sn2. Above 1 K the behaviour of the two samples is indistinguishable; the muon 1/T1 increases with decreasing temperature until 25 K when it plateaus. The 1/T1 relaxation rate differs strongly for the two cases below ∼0.8 K. At 0.1 K a rate of about 20 μs^-1 is seen in the polycrystal while in the single crystal it is only about 5 μs^-1. Even more revealing is the fact that longitudinal field decoupling spectra at very low temperatures demonstrate an essentially static spin system to be present in the polycrystalline material while the single crystal shows definite dynamic spin properties. We conclude that, in the presence of the distortion, long range magnetic order occurs below 0.9 K while in tetragonal symmetry long range order is suppressed (probably due to frustration) and spin fluctuations remain for T → 0.