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arXiv:0910.1164 · Physical Review B

Probing quantum criticality with scanning tunneling spectroscopy

Minh-Tien Tran, Ki‐Seok Kim

Published Jan 28, 2010• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We investigate the role of quantum coherence in tunneling conductance, where quantum criticality turns out to suppress Fano resonance. Based on the nonequilibrium noncrossing approximation, we show that the linear tunneling conductance exhibits weak Fano line shape with sharp cusp at zero energy in the multichannel Kondo effect resulting from incoherence associated with quantum criticality of impurity dynamics. In particular, shift of the peak position in the Fano resonance is predicted not to occur for the multichannel Kondo effect distinguished from the Fermi-liquid theory in the single-channel Kondo effect.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.81.035121

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We investigate the role of quantum coherence in tunneling conductance, where quantum criticality turns out to suppress Fano resonance. Based on the nonequilibrium noncrossing approximation, we show that the linear tunneling conductance exhibits weak Fano line shape with sharp cusp at zero energy in the multichannel Kondo effect resulting from incoherence associated with quantum criticality of impurity dynamics. In particular, shift of the peak position in the Fano resonance is predicted not to occur for the multichannel Kondo effect distinguished from the Fermi-liquid theory in the single-channel Kondo effect.
We study the effect of screening of an impurity charge by conduction electrons on resonant tunneling at arbitrary energy of the impurity level. We examine the exactly solvable model of the resonant level. We find the ground-state solutions of the model at all possible Coulomb interactions. The principle of equivalence between its universal behavior and the Kondo model is proved. However, the dependence of its scale invariant variable on the bare variables has different forms in two different regions of the parameter variations. This means that besides the well-known Kondo-like fixed point of the renormalization at weak Coulomb interaction a new stable point exists. The latter determines a singular low-energy behavior of the impurity. Based on the solution, the tunneling amplitude is calculated. It is shown that for a narrow gap or quasi-one-dimensional junction a severe renormalization of the one-electron half-width ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}}_{0}$ occurs ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}}_{\mathit{R}}$\ensuremath{\propto}${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}}_{0}$(${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}}_{0}$/D${)}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\alpha}}/(1\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\alpha}})}$. The comparison with perturbation results is discussed. Finally the conductance of the junction with randomly located impurities is calculated to clarify the crucial role of the non-Fermi-liquid behavior on the resonant tunneling under certain conditions.
We study how the non-Fermi-liquid nature of the overscreened multichannel Kondo impurity model affects the response to a BCS pairing term that, in the absence of the impurity, opens a gap $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}$. We find that the low-energy spectrum in the limit $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0$ actually does not correspond to the spectrum strictly at $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}=0$. In particular, in the two-channel Kondo model, the $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0$ ground state is an orbitally degenerate spin singlet, while it is an orbital singlet with a residual spin degeneracy at $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}=0$. In addition, there are fractionalized spin-1/2 subgap excitations whose energy in units of $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}$ tends toward a finite and universal value when $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0$, as if the universality of the anomalous power-law exponents that characterize the overscreened Kondo effect turned into universal energy ratios when the scale invariance is broken by $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}\ensuremath{\ne}0$. This intriguing phenomenon can be explained by the renormalization flow toward the overscreened fixed point and the gap cutting off the orthogonality catastrophe singularities. We also find other non-Fermi-liquid features at finite $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}$: the local density of states lacks coherence peaks, the states in the continuum above the gap are unconventional, and the boundary entropy is a nonmonotonic function of temperature. The persistent subgap excitations are characteristic of the non-Fermi-liquid fixed point of the model, and thus depend on the impurity spin and the number of screening channels.
We find the nonlinear conductance of a dissipative resonant level in the nonequilibrium steady state near its quantum critical point. The system consists of a spin-polarized quantum dot connected to two resistive leads that provide ohmic dissipation. We focus on the crossover from the strong-coupling, non-Fermi-liquid regime to the weak-coupling, Fermi-liquid ground state, a crossover driven by the instability of the quantum critical point to hybridization asymmetry or detuning of the level in the dot. We show that the crossover properties are given by tunneling through an effective single barrier described by the boundary sine-Gordon model. The nonlinear conductance is then obtained from thermodynamic Bethe ansatz results in the literature, which were developed to treat tunneling in a Luttinger liquid. The current-voltage characteristics are thus found for any value of the resistance of the leads. For the special case of lead resistance equal to the quantum resistance, we find mappings onto, first, the two-channel Kondo model and, second, an effectively noninteracting model from which the nonlinear conductance is found analytically. A key feature of the general crossover function is that the nonequilibrium crossover driven by applied bias is different from the crossover driven by temperature---we find that the nonequilibrium crossover is substantially sharper. Finally, we compare to experimental results for both the bias and temperature crossovers: the agreement is excellent.
Over recent decades, a growing number of systems, many of them quantum critical, have been shown to exhibit non-Fermi-liquid behavior, but a full analytic understanding of such systems out of equilibrium is still lacking. In this paper, we provide a distinct example with broad applications in correlated mesoscopic systems to address this issue---a two-channel Kondo-Luttinger model where a Kondo impurity couples to two voltage-biased interacting electron leads, experimentally realizable in a dissipative quantum dot. Therein, an exotic quantum phase transition has been known to exist since the 1990s from the one-channel to two-channel Kondo ground states by enhancing electron interactions in the leads, but a controlled analytic approach to this quantum critical point has not yet been established due to the breakdown of weak-coupling perturbation theory near this strong-coupling critical point. We present a controlled method to this long-standing problem by mapping the system in the strong-coupling regime to an effective spin-boson-fermion Hamiltonian. Another type of non-Fermi-liquid quantum critical point is discovered with a distinct logarithmic-in-temperature and -voltage dependence in transport. We further obtain an analytical form for the universal differential conductance out of equilibrium near the transition. Our approach can be further generalized to study nonequilibrium physics of other strong-coupling low-dimensional non-Fermi-liquid fixed points. The relevance of our results for recent experiments is discussed.
The Kondo effect and the Fano–Kondo effect are important phenomena that have been observed in quantum dots (QDs). We theoretically investigate the transport properties of a coupled QD system in order to study the possibility of detecting a qubit state from the modulation of the conductance peak in the Kondo effect and the dip in the Fano–Kondo effect. We show that the peak and dip of the conductance are both shifted depending on the qubit state. In particular, we find that we can estimate the optimal point and tunneling coupling between the |0> and |1> states of the qubit by measuring the shift of the positions of the conductance peak and dip, as functions of the applied gate voltage on the qubit and the distance between the qubit and the detector.
A quantum impurity system out of equilibrium comprises two metallic reservoirs with different chemical potentials and one mediating spin impurity between them. We study the highly nonlinear tunneling conductance of this system, and clarify that three coherent peaks, one zero-bias peak and two side peaks, naturally appear in the tunneling conductance. We use the Liouvillian approach, in which a complete set of basis operators is available, and construct a Liouville matrix to obtain Green’s function at the mediating site. We show that the two coherent side peaks are the outcome of steady-state nonequilibrium combined with strong electron correlation at the mediating site. Tunneling in the quantum impurity system out of equilibrium is performed by an entangled state which is a linear combination of two Kondo singlets formed by the spin at the mediating site and the coherent spins in each reservoir. The fluctuation by incoherent spins is also included. The spectral weights and positions of the three coherent peaks are analytically discussed via atomic limit analysis. Our theoretical results well fit experimental data obtained for quantum point contacts with symmetric and asymmetric Kondo couplings.