Carbon nanotube quantum dot has four-fold degenerate one-particle levels, which bring a variety to the Kondo effects taking place in a wide tunable-parameter space. We theoretically study an emergent SU(2) symmetry that is suggested by recent magneto-transport measurements, carried out near two electrons filling. It does not couple with the magnetic field, and emerges in the case where the spin and orbital Zeeman splittings cancel each other out in two of the one-particle levels among four. This situation seems to be realized in the recent experiment. Using the Wilson numerical renormalization group, we show that a crossover from the SU(4) to SU(2) Fermi-liquid behavior occurs as magnetic field increases at two impurity-electrons filling. We also find that the quasiparticles are significantly renormalized as the remaining two one-particle levels move away from the Fermi level and are frozen at high magnetic fields. Furthermore, we consider how the singlet ground state evolves during such a crossover. Specifically, we reexamine the SU(N) Kondo singlet for M impurity-electrons filling in the limit of strong exchange interactions. We find that the nondegenerate Fermi-liquid fixed point of Nozières and Blandin can be described as abosonic Perron–Frobenius vector for M composite pairs, each of which consists of one impurity-electron and one conduction-hole. This interpretation in terms of the Perron–Frobenius theorem can also be extended to the Fermi-liquid fixed-point without the SU(N) symmetry.
Carbon nanotube quantum dot has four-fold degenerate one-particle levels, which bring a variety to the Kondo effects taking place in a wide tunable-parameter space. We theoretically study an emergent SU(2) symmetry that is suggested by recent magneto-transport measurements, carried out near two electrons filling. It does not couple with the magnetic field, and emerges in the case where the spin and orbital Zeeman splittings cancel each other out in two of the one-particle levels among four. This situation seems to be realized in the recent experiment. Using the Wilson numerical renormalization group, we show that a crossover from the SU(4) to SU(2) Fermi-liquid behavior occurs as magnetic field increases at two impurity-electrons filling. We also find that the quasiparticles are significantly renormalized as the remaining two one-particle levels move away from the Fermi level and are frozen at high magnetic fields. Furthermore, we consider how the singlet ground state evolves during such a crossover. Specifically, we reexamine the SU(N) Kondo singlet for M impurity-electrons filling in the limit of strong exchange interactions. We find that the nondegenerate Fermi-liquid fixed point of Nozières and Blandin can be described as abosonic Perron–Frobenius vector for M composite pairs, each of which consists of one impurity-electron and one conduction-hole. This interpretation in terms of the Perron–Frobenius theorem can also be extended to the Fermi-liquid fixed-point without the SU(N) symmetry.
We study finite-temperature properties of the Kondo effect in a carbon nanotube (CNT) quantum dot using the Wilson numerical renormalization group (NRG). In the absence of magnetic fields, four degenerate energy levels of the CNT consisting of spin and orbital degrees of freedom give rise to the SU(4) Kondo effect. We revisit the universal scaling behavior of the SU(4) conductance for quarter- and half-filling in a wide temperature range. We find that the filling dependence of the universal scaling behavior at low temperatures T can be explained clearly with an extended Fermi-liquid theory. This theory clarifies that a T2 coefficient of conductance becomes zero at quarter-filling, whereas the coefficient at half-filling is finite. We also study a field-induced crossover from the SU(4) to SU(2) Kondo state observed at the half-filled CNT dot. The crossover is caused by the matching of the spin and orbital Zeeman splittings, which lock two levels among the four at the Fermi level even in magnetic fields B. We find that the conductance shows the SU(4) scaling behavior at ${\ensuremath{\mu}}_{B}B<{k}_{B}{T}_{K}^{\mathrm{SU}(4)}$ and it exhibits the SU(2) universality at ${\ensuremath{\mu}}_{B}B\ensuremath{\gg}{k}_{B}{T}_{K}^{\mathrm{SU}(4)}$, where TKSU(4) is the SU(4) Kondo temperature. To clarify how the excited states evolve along the SU(4) to SU(2) crossover, we also calculate the spectral function. The results show that the Kondo resonance width of the two states locked at the Fermi level becomes sharper with increasing fields. The spectral peaks of the other two levels moving away from the Fermi level merge with atomic limit peaks for ${\ensuremath{\mu}}_{B}B\ensuremath{\gtrsim}{k}_{B}{T}_{K}^{\mathrm{SU}(4)}$.
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.
We study the three-body Fermi liquid effects in the SU(N) Anderson impurity model within the strong interaction limit $U\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$, where the occupation number Nd of the impurity levels varies over the range of 0<Nd<1. The three-body correlations arise among the impurity electrons when the electron-hole symmetry, the time-reversal symmetry, or both are broken by external fields or potentials. They play a key role in low-energy transport, particularly in the next-to-leading-order terms of power expansion with respect to temperature T and bias voltage eV. Using the numerical renormalization group approach, we calculate the differential conductance and nonlinear current noise through quantum dots, as well as the thermal conductivity of both quantum dots and magnetic alloys. Specifically, we focus on the SU(2) and SU(4) cases, demonstrating how the three-body correlations evolve in the strong interaction limit across the 1/N-filling Kondo regime at ${N}_{d}^{}\ensuremath{\simeq}1.0$ and the valence fluctuation regime where the occupation number Nd varies rapidly with the position ${\ensuremath{\epsilon}}_{d}^{}$ of the impurity levels. We also show that the three-body correlations strongly couple with asymmetries in the tunnel couplings between quantum dots and reservoirs. For N=4, this coupling significantly affects the order (eV)3 nonlinear current through the quarter-filling Kondo state, where the electron-hole symmetry is broken. In particular, in the $U\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$ limit, the expansion coefficients exhibit clear plateau structures associated with the Kondo effect at ${N}_{d}^{}\ensuremath{\simeq}1.0$. Our formulation and analysis pave the way for deducing the three-body correlations from the low-energy experiments on the next-to-leading-order transport.
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.
The first topic of this thesis is the study of many-body effects in an one-dimensional strongly correlated electronic system - the Kondo lattice model. This system is tackled numerically by means of the density matrix renormalization group, since analytic method, i.e., perturbation the- ory fail due to competing coupling constants. The Kondo lattice model consists of a conduction band of electrons which couple via a spin exchange coupling to a localized spin lattice. We study the spectral properties of the one-dimensional Kondo lattice model as a function of the exchange coupling, the band filling, and the quasimomentum in the ferromagnetic and paramagnetic phases. We compute the dispersion relation of the quasiparticles, their lifetimes, and the Z factor. The exact ground state and the quasiparticle-dispersion relation of the Kondo lattice model with one conduction electron are well known. The quasiparticle could be identified as the spin polaron. Our calculations of the dispersion relation for partial band fillings give a result similar to the one-electron case, which suggests that the quasiparticle in both cases is the spin polaron. We find that the quasiparticle lifetime differs by orders of magnitude between the ferromagnetic and paramagnetic phases and depends strongly on the quasimomentum. Further- more, we study the effects of the Coulomb interaction on the phase diagram, the static magnetic susceptibility and electron spin relaxation. We show that onsite Coulomb interaction supports ferromagnetic order and nearest neighbor Coulomb interaction drives, depending on the elec- tron filling, either a paramagnetic or ferromagnetic order. Furthermore, we calculate electron quasiparticle life times, which can be related to electron spin relaxation and decoherence times, and explain their dependence on the strength of interactions and the electron filling in order to find the sweet spot of parameters where the relaxation time is maximized. We find that effective exchange processes between the electrons dominate the spin relaxation and decoherence rate. In the second topic of this thesis, we numerically calculate the electron transport through carbon nanotube based quantum dot devices. We use a master equation’s approach in first order of the tunneling rate to the leads and an extended constant interaction model to model the carbon nanotube system. This work has been done in collaboration with two experimental groups and we compare their respective experimentally obtained data to our numerical calculations. In both collaborations striking similarity between the numerical data and the experimental data is found. In the first collaboration transport through a carbon nanotube peapod, i.e, a carbon nanotube filled with fullerenes, has been measured. We identify a small hybridization between a fullerene molecule and the surrounding carbon nanotube to be of crucial importance for the understanding of the transport data. In the second collaboration, electron transport through a carbon nanotube rope, i.e., a bundle of carbon nanotubes has been measured. Also here, hybridization between the different nanotubes plays a crucial role. Furthermore, an external magnetic field is applied, which enables the identification of specific spin states of the compound quantum dot system. This might be important for future applications of such devices in spin-dependent electronics.
The numerical renormalization group is employed to study a double quantum (DQD) dot system consisting of two equivalent single-level dots, each coupled to its own lead and with a mutual capacitive coupling embodied in an interdot interaction U', in addition to the intradot Coulomb interaction U. We focus on the regime with two electrons on the DQD, and the evolution of the system on increasing U'/U. The spin-Kondo effect arising for U'=0 (SU(2) x SU(2)) is found to persist robustly with increasing U'/U, before a rapid but continuous crossover to (a) the SU(4) point U'=U where charge and spin degrees of freedom are entangled and the Kondo scale strongly enhanced; and then (b) a charge-Kondo state, in which a charge-pseudospin is quenched on coupling to the leads/conduction channels. A quantum phase transition of Kosterlitz-Thouless type then occurs from this Fermi liquid, strong coupling (SC) phase, to a broken symmetry, non-Fermi liquid charge ordered (CO) phase at a critical U'_c. Our emphasis in this paper is on the structure, stability and flows between the underlying RG fixed points, on the overall phase diagram in the (U,U')-plane and evolution of the characteristic low-energy Kondo scale inherent to the SC phase; and on static physical properties such as spin- and charge-susceptibilities (staggered and uniform), including universality and scaling behaviour in the strongly correlated regime. Some exact results for associated Wilson ratios are also obtained.