We study a system consisting of a junction of
N wires, where the junction is characterized by a scalar
S-matrix, and an impurity spin is coupled to the electrons near the junction. The wires are modeled as weakly interacting Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids. We derive the renormalization group (RG) equations for the Kondo couplings of the spin to the electrons on different wires. We analyze the RG flows and fixed points for different values of the initial Kondo couplings and of the junction
S-matrix, such as the decoupled
S-matrix and the Griffiths (connected)
S-matrix. We find that the Kondo couplings flow either towards a ferromagnetic (FM) fixed point or towards large and antiferromagnetic (AFM) values in one of two ways. For the Griffiths
S-matrix, one of the strong coupling flows is towards a FM fixed point with decoupled wires; this is seen by a perturbative analysis. Thus if we start with a system of connected wires with an AFM coupling to the spin impurity, the flow at large distances is towards a system of disconnected wires at the FM fixed point. For the decoupled
S-matrix, the flow is either to a FM fixed point or to one of two strong coupling fixed points in which all the channels are strongly coupled to each other through the impurity spin. Strong interactions between the electrons with ${K}_{\ensuremath{\rho}}<N∕(N+2)$ can stabilize a multichannel fixed point in which the coupling between different channels goes to zero. We also study the temperature dependence of the conductance at the decoupled and Griffiths
S-matrices.
Quantum impurity models are the prototypical examples of quantum many-body dynamics which manifests in their spectral and transport properties. Single channel Anderson(and Kondo model) leads to the Fermi liquid ground state in the strong coupling regime which corresponds to a stable infrared fixed point at which the quantum impurity gets completely screened by the conduction electrons. Quantum impurity models with non-trivial density of states exhibit quantum phase transition and this quantum criticality lies in the universality class of local quantum critical systems. In this paper, we report first study of the flow equation renormalization of gapped Kondo model which has gapped density of states, the gap being at the Fermi level. Flow equation renormalization group method has proved to be one of the very robust renormalization methods to study Kondo physics both in equilibrium as well as in non-equilibrium. Here we have shown that this method can also be employed to study local quantum criticality. We have calculated the flow equations for the Kondo coupling and solved them for various values of the gap parameter and we find that there is suppression of Kondo divergence as gap is increased which signifies that as gap is increased, renormalization flow goes away from the strong coupling fixed point. We have also calculated the spin susceptibility and we find that as gap is increased, susceptibility goes over to the Curie behaviour and hence confirming the renormalization flow towards the local moment fixed point.
We consider a magnetic S = 1/2 impurity in the antiferromagnetic spin chain as a function of two coupling parameters: the symmetric coupling of the impurity to two sites in the chain J1 and the coupling between the two sites J2. By using field theory arguments and numerical calculations we can identify all possible fixed points and classify the renormalization flow between them, which leads to a nontrivial phase diagram. Depending on the detailed choice of the two (frustrating) coupling strengths, the stable phases correspond either to a decoupled spin with Curie law behavior or to a non-Fermi-liquid fixed point with a logarithmically diverging impurity susceptibility as in the two-channel Kondo effect. Our results resolve a controversy about the renormalization flow.
The two-channel Kondo (2CK) effect with its exotic ground state properties has remained difficult to realize in physical systems. At low energies, a quantum impurity with orbital degree of freedom, like a proton bound in an interstitial lattice space, comprises a 3-level system with a unique ground state and (at least) doubly degenerate rotational excitations with excitation energy
Delta0. When immersed in a metal, electronic angular momentum scattering induces transitions between any two of these levels (couplings
J), while the electron spin is conserved. We show by extensive numerical renormalization group (NRG) calculations that without fine-tuning of parameters this system exhibits a 2CK fixed point, due to Kondo correlations in the excited-state doublet whose degeneracy is stabilized by the host lattice parity, while the channel symmetry (electron spin) is guaranteed by time reversal symmetry. We find a pronounced plateau in the entropy at
S(TK<T<Delta0)=kBln2 between the high-
T value,
S(TggDelta0)=kBln3, and the 2CK ground state value,
S(0)=kBlnsqrt2. This indicates a downward renormalization of the doublet below the non-interacting ground state, thus realizing the 2CK fixed point, in agreement with earlier conjectures. We mapped out the phase diagram of the model in the
J−Delta0 plane. The Kondo temperature
TK shows non-monotonic
J-dependence, characteristic for 2CK systems.newline indent Beside the two-channel Kondo effect of the model, we also study the single-channel version, which is realized by applying a strong magnetic field to the conduction band electrons so that their degeneracy is lifted and consequently having only one kind of electrons scattering off the impurity. This single-channel case is easier to analyze since the Hilbert space is not as large as that of the 2CK. We equally find a downward renormalization of the excited state energy by the Kondo correlations in the SU(2) doublet. In a wide range of parameter values this stabilizes the single-channel Kondo fixed point and a phase diagram is also mapped out for the model. In the single-channel version a plateau is found in the entropy at
S(TK<T<Delta0)=kBln2 between high-
T value,
S(TggDelta0)=kBln3, and the single-channel Kondo ground state value,
S(0)=kBln1.
We study a system of an impurity spin coupled to a junction of several Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids using a renormalization group scheme. For the decoupled S -matrix at the junction, there is a range of Kondo couplings which flow to a multi-channel fixed point for repulsive inter-electron interactions; this is associated with a characteristic temperature dependence of the spin-flip scatterings. If the junction is governed by the Griffiths S -matrix, the Kondo couplings flow to a strong-coupling fixed point where all the wires are decoupled.
We study the Kondo model---a magnetic impurity coupled to a one-dimensional wire via exchange coupling---by using Wilson's numerical renormalization group technique. By applying an approach similar to which was used to compute the two-impurity problem we managed to improve the poor spatial resolution of the numerical renormalization group method. In this way we have calculated the impurity-spin--conduction-electron-spin correlation function which is a measure of the Kondo compensation cloud whose existence has been a long-standing problem in solid-state physics. We also present results on the temperature dependence of the Kondo correlations.