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arXiv:1011.6629 · Physical Review B

Magnetic-field-induced quantum phase transitions in the two-impurity Anderson model

Lijun Zhu, Jian‐Xin Zhu

Published Jun 20, 2011• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In the two-impurity Anderson model, the interimpurity spin-exchange interaction favors a spin-singlet state between two impurities, leading to the breakdown of the Kondo effect. We show that a local uniform magnetic field can delocalize the quasiparticles to restore the Kondo resonance. This transition is found to be continuous, accompanied by not only the divergence of the staggered (antiferromagnetic) susceptibility, but also the divergence of the uniform spin susceptibility. This may imply that the magnetic-field-induced quantum phase transitions in Kondo systems are in favor of the local critical type.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.83.245110

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In the two-impurity Anderson model, the interimpurity spin-exchange interaction favors a spin-singlet state between two impurities, leading to the breakdown of the Kondo effect. We show that a local uniform magnetic field can delocalize the quasiparticles to restore the Kondo resonance. This transition is found to be continuous, accompanied by not only the divergence of the staggered (antiferromagnetic) susceptibility, but also the divergence of the uniform spin susceptibility. This may imply that the magnetic-field-induced quantum phase transitions in Kondo systems are in favor of the local critical type.
We discuss models of interacting magnetic impurities coupled to a metallic host, which show one or more boundary quantum phase transitions where the ground-state spin changes as a function of the interimpurity couplings. The simplest example is realized by two spin-12\frac{1}{2}21​ Kondo impurities coupled to a single orbital of the host. We investigate the phase diagram and crossover behavior of this model and present numerical renormalization-group results together with general arguments showing that the singlet-doublet quantum phase transition is either of first order or of the Kosterlitz-Thouless type, depending on the symmetry of the Kondo couplings. Thus we find an exponentially small energy scale within the Kondo regime, and a two-stage Kondo effect, in a single-channel situation. Connections to other models and possible applications are discussed.
By means of the numerical renormalization group method, I study the Kondo effect and quantum phase transitions in a double quantum dot system with on-site repulsion UUU, interdot repulsion V,V,V, and magnetic field BBB. At zero temperature and B=0B=0B=0, there is a local spin triplet-singlet transition of the Kosterlitz-Thouless type when VVV increases to a critical value ${V}_{c}\ensuremath{\approx}U$. With increasing BBB, a singlet-triplet transition of the second order occurs at a critical magnetic field ${B}_{c}\ensuremath{\approx}V\ensuremath{-}U$. The magnetic susceptibility and the first derivatives of the spin correlation and double occupation are expected to diverge at Bc{B}_{c}Bc​ and to have different critical exponents, which are universal for different parameters. An appropriate magnetic field can restore the Kondo effect.
Motivated by the unconventional superconductivity observed in heavy-fermion metals, we investigate pairing susceptibilities near a continuous quantum phase transition of the Kondo-destruction type. We solve two-impurity Bose-Fermi Anderson models with Ising and Heisenberg forms of the interimpurity exchange interaction using continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo and numerical renormalization-group methods. Each model exhibits a Kondo-destruction quantum critical point separating Kondo-screened and local-moment phases. For antiferromagnetic interimpurity exchange interactions, singlet pairing is found to be enhanced in the vicinity of the transition. Implications of this result for heavy-fermion superconductivity are discussed.
The problem of two magnetic impurities in a normal metal exposes the two opposite tendencies in the formation of a singlet ground state, driven respectively by the single-ion Kondo effect with conduction electrons to screen impurity spins or the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida interaction between the two impurities to directly form impurity spin singlet. However, whether the competition between these two tendencies can lead to a quantum critical point has been debated over more than two decades. Here, we study this problem by applying the newly proposed natural orbitals renormalization group method to a lattice version of the two-impurity Kondo model with a direct exchange KKK between the two impurity spins. The method allows for unbiased access to the ground state wave functions and low-lying excitations for sufficiently large system sizes. We demonstrate the existence of a quantum critical point, characterized by the power-law divergence of impurity staggered susceptibility with critical exponent $\ensuremath{\gamma}=0.60(1)$, on the antiferromagnetic side of KKK when the interimpurity distance RRR is even lattice spacing, while a crossover behavior is recovered when RRR is odd lattice spacing. These results have ultimately resolved the long-standing discrepancy between the numerical renormalization group and quantum Monte Carlo studies, confirming a link of this two-impurity Kondo critical point to a hidden particle-hole symmetry predicted by the local Fermi liquid theory.
We investigate a model of two Kondo impurities coupled via an Ising interaction. Exploiting the mapping to a generalized single-impurity Anderson model, we establish that the model has a singlet and a (pseudospin) doublet phase separated by a Kosterlitz-Thouless quantum phase transition. Based on a strong-coupling analysis and renormalization-group arguments, we show that at this transition the conductance GGG through the system either displays a zero-bias anomaly, $G\ensuremath{\sim}{\ensuremath{\mid}V\ensuremath{\mid}}^{\ensuremath{-}2(\sqrt{2}\ensuremath{-}1)}$, or takes a universal value, $G=({e}^{2}∕\ensuremath{\pi}\ensuremath{\hbar}){\mathrm{cos}}^{2}(\ensuremath{\pi}∕2\sqrt{2})$, depending on the experimental setup. Close to the Toulouse point of the individual Kondo impurities, the strong-coupling analysis allows us to obtain the location of the phase boundary analytically. For general model parameters, we determine the phase diagram and investigate the thermodynamics using numerical renormalization-group calculations. In the singlet phase close to the quantum phase transition, the entropy is quenched in two steps: first the two Ising-coupled spins form a magnetic minidomain which is, in a second step, screened by a Kondoesque collective resonance in an effective solitonic Fermi sea. In addition, we present a flow-equation analysis which provides a different mapping of the two-impurity model to a generalized single-impurity Anderson model in terms of fully renormalized couplings, which is applicable for the whole range of model parameters.
We study a pseudogap Anderson-Holstein model of a magnetic impurity level that hybridizes with a conduction band whose density of states vanishes in power-law fashion at the Fermi energy, and couples, via its charge, to a nondispersive bosonic mode (e.g., an optical phonon). The model, which we treat using poor-man's scaling and the numerical renormalization group, exhibits quantum phase transitions of different types depending on the strength of the impurity-boson coupling. For weak impurity-boson coupling, the suppression of the density of states near the Fermi energy leads to quantum phase transitions between strong-coupling (Kondo) and local-moment phases. For sufficiently strong impurity-boson coupling, however, the bare repulsion between a pair of electrons in the impurity level becomes an effective attraction, leading to quantum phase transitions between strong-coupling (charge Kondo) and local-charge phases. Even though the Hamiltonian exhibits different symmetries in the spin and charge sectors, the thermodynamic properties near the two types of quantum phase transition are closely related under spin-charge interchange. Moreover, the critical responses to a local magnetic field (for small impurity-boson coupling) and to an electric potential (for large impurity-boson coupling) are characterized by the same exponents, whose values place these quantum-critical points in the universality class of the pseudogap Anderson model. One specific case of the pseudogap Anderson-Holstein model may be realized in a double-quantum-dot device, where the quantum phase transitions manifest themselves in the finite-temperature linear electrical conductance.