The low temperature behavior of a Fermi liquid can be described in terms of quasiparticle excitations that are in 1-1 correspondence with those of the noninteracting system. Because of adiabatic continuity, the Landau parameters, which describe the interactions between the quasiparticles, must evolve continuously as the interactions are turned on and be described by a set of flow equations. For strongly correlated electron systems it is not possible to follow this flow in perturbation theory when the interactions become strong. We explore the idea here of overcoming this problem by renormalizing the quasiparticles in this flow using a renormalized perturbation theory. This approach is tested in the case of a single impurity Anderson model. Analytic flow equations are derived which give excellent results for the Landau parameters in the strong correlation regime.
The low temperature behavior of a Fermi liquid can be described in terms of quasiparticle excitations that are in 1-1 correspondence with those of the noninteracting system. Because of adiabatic continuity, the Landau parameters, which describe the interactions between the quasiparticles, must evolve continuously as the interactions are turned on and be described by a set of flow equations. For strongly correlated electron systems it is not possible to follow this flow in perturbation theory when the interactions become strong. We explore the idea here of overcoming this problem by renormalizing the quasiparticles in this flow using a renormalized perturbation theory. This approach is tested in the case of a single impurity Anderson model. Analytic flow equations are derived which give excellent results for the Landau parameters in the strong correlation regime.
We give a Hamiltonian-based interpretation of microscopic Fermi liquid theory within a renormalization group framework. The Fermi liquid fixed-point Hamiltonian with its leading-order corrections is identified and we show that the mean field calculations for this model correspond to the Landau phenomenological approach. This is illustrated first of all for the Kondo and Anderson models of magnetic impurities which display Fermi liquid behaviour at low temperatures. We then show how these results can be deduced by a reorganization of perturbation theory, in close parallel to that for the renormalized φ4 field theory. The Fermi liquid results follow from the two lowest order diagrams of the renormalized perturbation expansion. The calculations for the impurity models are simpler than for the general case because the self-energy depends on frequency only. We show, however, that a similar renormalized expansion can be derived also for the case of a translationally invariant system. The parameters specifying the Fermi liquid fixed-point Hamiltonian are related to the renormalized vertices appearing in the perturbation theory. The collective zero sound modes appear in the quasiparticle-quasihole ladder sum of the renormalized perturbation expansion. The renormalized perturbation expansion can in principle be used beyond the Fermi liquid regime to higher temperatures. This approach should be particularly useful for heavy fermions and other strongly correlated electron systems, where the renormalization of the single-particle excitations are particularly large. We briefly look at the breakdown of Fermi liquid theory from a renormalized perturbation theory point of view. We show how a modified version of the approach can be used in some situations, such as the spinless Luttinger model, where Fermi liquid theory is not applicable. Other examples of systems where the Fermi liquid theory breaks down are also briefly discussed.
We generalize Nozi\`eres' Fermi-liquid theory for the low-energy behavior of the Kondo model to that of the single-impurity Anderson model. In addition to the electrons' phase shift at the Fermi energy, the low-energy Fermi-liquid theory is characterized by four Fermi-liquid parameters: the two given by Nozi\`eres that enter to first order in the excitation energy, and two additional ones that enter to second order and are needed away from particle-hole symmetry. We express all four parameters in terms of zero-temperature physical observables, namely the local charge and spin susceptibilities and their derivatives with respect to the local level position. We determine these in terms of the bare parameters of the Anderson model using Bethe ansatz and numerical renormalization group (NRG) calculations. Our low-energy Fermi-liquid theory applies throughout the crossover from the strong-coupling Kondo regime via the mixed-valence regime to the empty-orbital regime. From the Fermi-liquid theory, we determine the conductance through a quantum dot symmetrically coupled to two leads in the regime of small magnetic field, low temperature, and small bias voltage, and compute the coefficients of the $\ensuremath{\sim}{B}^{2}, \ensuremath{\sim}{T}^{2}$, and $\ensuremath{\sim}{V}^{2}$ terms exactly in terms of the Fermi-liquid parameters. The coefficients of T2,V2, and B2 are found to change sign during the Kondo to empty-orbital crossover. The crossover becomes universal in the limit that the local interaction is much larger than the level width. For completeness, we also compute the shot noise and discuss the resulting Fano factor.
In this thesis, we study quantum impurity models by means of the diagrammatic perturbation theory. First, parquet equations are simplified in the strong coupling regime and low temperatures and an analytically controllable approximation results. We apply it to both the single impurity Anderson model and the Hubbard model in the dynamical mean-field approximation and we study properties of the solution. We recover the correct three-peak density of states including the Kondo resonance and prove that it has the correct exponential scaling with increasing interaction strength. Our approximate scheme is further extended to multi-orbital models. We explicitly solve the two-orbital single impurity Anderson model and the Hubbard model and calculate effects of the Hund exchange interaction and the crystal field.
We present a microscopic Fermi liquid view on the low-energy transport through an Anderson impurity with N discrete levels, at arbitrary electron filling N_{d}. It is applied to nonequilibrium current fluctuations, for which the two-quasiparticle collision integral and the three-body correlations that determine the quasiparticle energy shift play important roles. Using the numerical renormalization group up to N=6, we find that for strong interactions the three-body fluctuations are determined by a single parameter other than the Kondo energy scale in a wide filling range 1≲N_{d}≲N-1. It significantly affects the current noise for N>2 and the behavior of noise in magnetic fields.
Strongly correlated electron systems show a rich variety of astonishing physical phenomena. However, the strong interactions make the theoretical description of these systems a highly non-trivial task. Even the simplest models cannot be solved exactly, and one has to reside to approximative solutions, which often cover only certain aspects of the physics contained in these models. In recent years progress has been made in the theoretical description of correlated lattice systems through the mapping of lattice models onto effective impurity models. The most prominent example is the mapping of the Hubbard model onto an effective single impurity Anderson model (SIAM). Within this description both models feature the prominent Kondo effect, which leads to the emergence of low energy quasiparticles. The occurrence of such excitations is a result of the dynamical screening of local magnetic moments and the corresponding formation of a low temperature Fermi liquid phase. On the other hand these theories usually fail in the description of non Fermi liquid behavior, which is for example observed in the normal state of high temperature superconductors and some Heavy-Fermion systems. Strong nonlocal fluctuations drive the dynamics of these systems. In the theoretical treatment, due to the mapping of the lattice problem to an effective single impurity problem, these fluctuations are not adequately described.\\\\ In this thesis a new self-consistent approach for the inclusion of spatial correlations is presented for the Hubbard model. In contrast to existing quantum cluster theories in this field, the approach allows for the simultaneous description of short and long range pair correlations. Due to the intimate connection of this new lattice theory with the two impurity Anderson model (TIAM) a thorough numerical investigation of the TIAM is undertaken in this thesis. The competition of the Kondo effect with the RKKY interactions is studied in great detail. Furthermore two new solvers for the TIAM are introduced, which extend existing non crossing approximations for the SIAM.
An essential role for the description of correlated quantum many-particle systems is played by impurity problems. These consist of a small number of localized orbitals, where the electrons are subject to a Coulomb-interaction, coupled to noninteracting bath degrees of freedom. Impurity models are used for the description of magnetic impurities in metals, of quantum points in nanostructures, and in the context of the dynamical mean field theory (DMFT). For their solution a large number of numerical methods exists. We mention here quantum Monte Carlo methods, the numerical renormalization group, or the exact diagonalization method. In this thesis we introduce a new approach to impurity problems, which is based on the functional renormalization group (fRG). In contrast to the methods mentioned above this approach is approximative, but it can be applied with comparatively lower numerical effort. The aim of this thesis is to examine the advantages and limits of this method. An important role in this connection is played by the single impurity Anderson model (SIAM), which is already understood very well with other methods and is seen as a prototype for models with strong local correlations. The spin fluctuations of this model are governed by the so-called Kondo energy scale and a central question of this thesis is whether this scale can be reproduced with our approach. We begin with a short introduction to the Green's function formalism for correlated quantum many particle systems. Then the fRG flow equations for the one-particle irreducible vertex functions are deduced, and several approximation schemes are discussed. In chapter 4 we introduce the fRG scheme used in this thesis. At first the SIAM is mapped to a semi-infinite chain, in which the interacting orbital is given by the first site of this chain. The system is then subdivided into two parts. The first part, which is called 'core', consists of the interacting orbital and the first L bath sites. The remaining bath sites form the second part. At the beginning both parts are decoupled from each other such that the core can be solved exactly. Starting with this exact solution the coupling between the core and the remaining bath sites is switched on slowly in a renormalization group flow. This way it is possible to calculate the one-particle and two-particle correlation functions on the correlated site. We call this flow scheme 'hybridization flow'. The flow equations are formulated in an effective theory on the first bath site outside the core, which turns out to be advantageous compared to other implementations of the hybridization flow. In chapter 5 this hybridization flow method is applied to the SIAM with semi-elliptic bath density of states. We discuss the differences which arise for different core-sizes (L = 0,1,2,3) and for different truncations of the fRG flow equations. In the cases L=0 and L=2 the local Fermi liquid properties of the SIAM and the associated Kondo scale can not be reproduced in both approximation schemes. For the core sizes L=1 and L=3 the ground state of the core is already a spin singlet state in the beginning of the flow and the Fermi liquid properties are reproduced. The Kondo energy scale, which determines the width of the central quasi-particle peak and the size of the local spin-susceptibility, is however not accurately resolved. This is partly due to the finite temperature used in our implementation such that for larger interaction strength the temperature is above the Kondo energy scale. The application of the hybridization flow method to quantum impurity problems in the context of the DMFT is discussed in chapter 6. In this approach lattice models with a local interaction, like the Hubbard model, are mapped to an effective impurity problem for a single lattice site embedded in a dynamical mean field representing the influence of the other electrons. This scheme is exact in infinitely many dimensions and a nonperturbative approximation method for finite-dimensional systems. In particular the Mott metal-insulator transition in the Hubbard model is successfully described by this method. One class of quantities, which is easily accessible from the hybridization flow scheme, is given by the local two-particle correlation functions. These play an essential role in non-local extensions of the DMFT. Therefore we mainly focus on these quantities. At first we apply our flow scheme to the Hubbard model on the Bethe lattice in infinite dimensions and calculate the local one-particle irreducible vertex functions in the insulating and the metallic phase in good agreement with previous calculations, which use the exact diagonalization method as impurity solver. After this we extend our flow scheme to a cluster DMFT method, which includes short-range antiferromagnetic correlations and calculate again the local and non-local vertex functions for the two-dimensional Hubbard model. We compare these to the results of the single-site DMFT.