Crystal growth and magnetic behavior of CeCl3 Nashra Pistawala 1 , Suman Karmakar 2 , Rajeev Rawat 2 and Surjeet Singh* 1 1 Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune 411008 2 UGC-DAE Consortium for Scientific Research, University Campus, Khandwa Road, Indore 452 001 * surjeet.singh@iiserpune.ac.in Abstract We have grown high-quality single crystals of CeCl3 and characterised them using single- crystal x-ray diffraction and Laue diffraction techniques. CeCl3 crystallizes in a trigonal crystal structure with space group P-3 (No. 147). The magnetic susceptibility shows a broad maximum centred around 50 K. Upon cooling further, the susceptibility rises sharply in a Curie-Weiss manner due to the crystal field split lowest Kramers doublet |5 2 ⁄ ,± 5 2 ⁄⟩ with an effective spin 1/2 and a very weak coupling between the Ce moments (Weiss temperature ~ 0.2 K). The magnetic specific heat or  4 shows a Schottky anomaly around 30 K due to the first excited crystal field level located around 58 K. Interestingly, CeCl3 shows a hint of magnetic field-induced transition in the heat capacity near 2K. I. Introduction Quantum antiferromagnets have garnered enormous attention in the past few years. They exhibit exotic phases at low temperatures, including, the much-celebrated Quantum Spin Liquid (QSL) state characterized by fractional excitations and long-range entanglement. The triangular and Kagome lattice antiferromagnets are ideal platforms to realize a QSL phase. In 2009, Kitaev proposed an exactly solvable model for spin 1/2 on a honeycomb lattice, the ground state of which is QSL. Unlike geometric frustration, where the frustration arises due to the geometry of the underlying lattice, in the Kitaev model it is the bond- dependent Ising like interactions that gives rise to a strong frustration. The iridates (e.g., Na2IrO3) and the ruthenates (e.g., RuCl3) have been extensively studied to investigate the interesting physics of the Kitaev model [1,2]. Recently, YbCl3, a rare-earth trichloride, has