We present an extensive study of the two-impurity Kondo problem for spin-1 adatoms on a square lattice using an exact canonical transformation to map the problem onto an effective one-dimensional system that can be numerically solved using the density matrix renormalization group method. We provide a simple intuitive picture and identify the different regimes, depending on the distance between the two impurities, Kondo coupling
JK, longitudinal anisotropy
D, and transverse anisotropy
E. In the isotropic case, two impurities on opposite (the same) sublattices have a singlet (triplet) ground state. However, the energy difference between the triplet ground state and the singlet excited state is very small and we expect an effectively fourfold-degenerate ground state, i.e., two decoupled impurities. For large enough
JK the impurities are practically uncorrelated forming two independent underscreened states with the conduction electrons, a clear nonperturbative effect. When the impurities are entangled in an RKKY-like state, Kondo correlations persist and the two effects coexist: the impurities are underscreened, and the dangling spin-
1/2 degrees of freedom are responsible for the interimpurity entanglement. We analyze the effects of magnetic anisotropy in the development of quasiclassical correlations.
A magnetic impurity embedded in a metal is collectively screened by Fermi-surface quasiparticles into a many-body spin-singlet ground state, forming a Kondo cloud of size
ξK∼ℏvF/(kBTK). This kinematic picture collapses in flat bands, where
vF=0 and the hierarchy of dispersive energy shells is absent. Here we show that the missing organizing principle is quantum geometry. A magnetic impurity coupled to an isolated flat band selects a single active bath mode: a coherent superposition of flat-band Bloch states weighted by the hybridization factor
v(k), while all orthogonal flat-band modes remain dark. The resulting flat-band Kondo problem is a quantum geometric molecule, with an algebraic Kondo scale set by the total projected hybridization strength rather than a logarithmic-renormalization scale. In real space, the impurity-bath spin correlation defines a quantum geometric Kondo cloud. Its cloud-size tensor admits a gauge-invariant decomposition into a hybridization-weighted quantum metric, a dressed Berry-connection covariance, and a positive hybridization-gradient term, yielding the lower bound
ξK2≥∑kρ(k)Trg(k), where
ρ(k)=∣v(k)∣2/∑k∣v(k)∣2. Our result reveals that, in flat bands, Kondo screening is governed by the quantum geometry and interference structure of the impurity-selected Bloch wave packet, rather than Fermi-surface kinematics.
The local Kondo entanglement is defined as the concurrence of a short-ranged Kondo singlet state consisting of a localized magnetic moment and a nearby conduction electron. We derive the entanglement phase diagram of the Rasul-Schlottmann model, the effective spin-only Hamiltonian for the two-impurity Kondo model in the numerical renormalization group approach. We show that the local Kondo entanglement vanishes exactly at the two-impurity Kondo critical point, associated concomitantly with a jump in the inter-impurity entanglement. We discuss how to generalize this result to a Kondo lattice model preserving the same enhanced spin symmetry.
Electronic flat bands represent a paradigmatic platform to realize strongly correlated matter due to their associated divergent density of states. In common instances, including electron-electron interactions leads to magnetic instabilities for repulsive interactions and superconductivity for attractive interactions. Nevertheless, interactions of a Kondo nature in flat-band systems have remained relatively unexplored. Here we address the emergence of interacting states mediated by Kondo lattice coupled to a flat-band system. Combining dynamical mean-field theory and tensor networks methods to solve flat-band Kondo lattice models in one and two dimensions, we show the emergence of a robust underscreened regime leading to a magnetically ordered state in the flat band. Our results put forward flat-band Kondo lattice models as a platform to explore the genuine interplay between flat-band physics and many-body Kondo screening.
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
K 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
K when the interimpurity distance
R is even lattice spacing, while a crossover behavior is recovered when
R 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.
The Kondo effect in a one-dimensional spin-
21 XXZ model in the gapless
XY regime $(\ensuremath{-}1<\ensuremath{\Delta}<~1)$ is studied both analytically and numerically. In our model an impurity spin
(S=1/2) is coupled to a single spin in the
XXZ spin chain. Perturbative renormalization-group (RG) analysis is performed for various limiting cases to deduce low-energy fixed points. It is shown that in the ground state the impurity spin is screened by forming a singlet with a spin in the host
XXZ chain. In the antiferromagnetic side $(0<\ensuremath{\Delta}<~1)$ the host chain is cut into two semi-infinite chains by the singlet. In the ferromagnetic side $(\ensuremath{-}1<\ensuremath{\Delta}<0),$ on the other hand, the host
XXZ chain remains as a single chain through ``healing'' of a weakened bond in the low-energy (long-distance) limit. The density-matrix renormalization-group method is used to study the size scaling of finite-size energy gaps and the power-law decay of correlation functions in the ground state. The numerical results are in good agreement with the predictions of the RG analysis. Low-temperature behaviors of specific heat and susceptibility are also discussed.