In this thesis we study the physical properties of quantum magnetic impurities in con- densed matter systems. More precisely, we are interested in the quantum many-body phenomena emerging in metallic quantum wires with spin-orbit coupling (SOC) in the presence of magnetic impurities. In particular, we investigate Kondo effect in topological superconducting quantum wires sustaining Majorana zero modes (MZMs) bound to their edges. The first part of this work is dedicated to a general digression on the formation of localized magnetic moments in solid state materials and the emergence of the Kondo effect in single-impurity systems. We further study a system composed by a single level quantum dot coupled to a metallic reservoir and to two MZMs with opposite polarizations. The system is described by a version of single impurity Anderson model (SIAM) adapted to account for the MZMs. To access the Kondo physics we used the projection approach to derive an effective Kondo-like Hamiltonian from the SIAM. We show the coexistence of the many-body Kondo singlet and a local Majorana singlet which results from the robustness of the Kondo fixed points even in the presence local Majorana operators. Moreover, we show that the free MZMs of the system are responsible for the impurity residual entropy S res = N/ 2 k B ln(2), where N is the number of free MZMs. This result reveals a fractional residual entropy for an odd number of free MZMs associated with a local non-Fermi liquid behavior. Both results were confirmed by the perturbative Anderson’s Poor Man’s scaling (PMS), and the nonperturbative Wilson’s numerical renormalization group (NRG). The second part of the thesis is dedicated to the low-temperature physics of two-impurity systems. We revisit the well known Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) interaction between two spatially separated magnetic impurities in a quantum wire with SOC. To compute the RKKY coupling we use the original Ruderman-Kittel approach, based on the traditional second-order perturbation theory. This allows us find also the Dzaloshinskii-Moriya and Ising interactions between the impurities, both originated from the SOC. Our results show that due to momentum-spin-lock, provided by the SOC, the RKKY coupling does not decay with the inverse of the inter-impurities distance, as in the usual case. Instead, the coupling survives even at large distances oscillating with a characteristic wave-vector 2k R, where k R is proportional to the Rashba SOC.
We consider strongly correlated regimes which emerge at low temperature in coupled quantum dot (or magnetic impurity) systems. In strongly correlated systems a single particle description fails to explain the observed behaviour, so we resort to many body methods. We describe our system using a 2-impurity Anderson model and develop a numerical renormalisation group procedure which provides non-perturbative insight into the low energy behaviour, through calculation of dynamic quantities. We combine this approach with renormalised perturbation theory, thus acquiring a picture of how the Hamiltonian and interactions change at low energies. These approaches are first used to study the emergence of a Kondo effect with an SU(4) symmetry in capacitively-coupled double quantum dot systems. We classify the 'types' of SU(4) symmetry which can emerge and show how an experimentalist might achieve such emergence through tuning their system. We provide a way of distinguishing between the SU(2) and SU(4) Kondo regimes by considering the conductance. We also study a quantum critical point which occurs in the Heisenberg coupled quantum dot/impurity model. There is an anomalous entropy contributed by the impurities in this regime which is indicative of an uncoupled Majorana Fermion. We calculate dynamic quantities in regimes with different symmetries and establish correspondence with the 2-channel Kondo model. We formulate possible pictures of the underlying mechanisms of the critical point and construct a Majorana fermion model for the case with particle-hole symmetry, which explains the non-Fermi liquid energy levels and degeneracies obtained. We conjecture that a Majorana zero mode is present, and that this is responsible for the anomalous entropy.
We investigate Kondo physics in a quantum dot side coupled to a Majorana zero mode, where the Majorana coupling induces both spin and charge fluctuations that determine low-energy behavior. Using a wave-function-based Schrieffer-Wolff transformation combined with numerical renormalization group calculations, we discover an
SUL(2) spin-charge-entangled Kondo state, in which conduction electrons screen the spin-charge-entangled degrees of freedom of the Majorana-quantum dot subsystem. We show that the parity degeneracy of this state gives rise to spin-resolved Andreev-normal boundary conditions, resulting in non-Fermi-liquid behavior. Density matrix renormalization group simulations directly resolve a hallmark of these boundary conditions---a subleading even-odd effect in the screening cloud. Our framework bridges strongly correlated and topological phenomena, and naturally extends to
ZN parafermions and
SU(N) Kondo systems.
In this paper, we study a set-up in which quantum dot is tunnel-coupled to Majorana-Kramers pair(MKP) which are the edge modes of time reversal invariant topological superconductor (TRITOPS), which is an experimental realization of time reversal invariant Kitaev chain model. Our motivation is to study the effect of Majorana-Kramers pair on Kondo fixed point and conversely the effect of Kondo interaction on Majorana-Kramers pair. This way we can capture the signatures of Majorana fermions on Kondo effect in quantum dots which can be probed feasibly in experiments. Employing the renormalization group method, we report the first study of the signatures of Majorana-Kramers pair in the dynamical spin susceptibility of the quantum dot electrons. We not only calculate the flow equations for coupling constants but also study the renormalization of observables and especially calculate dynamical spin susceptibility. We propose that since these dynamical quantities have signatures of Majorana-Kramers pair, so they provide an unambiguous experimental probe for detection of Majorana fermions in TRITOPS.
In this document we present a study of the thermodynamic and transport properties of two kinds of quantum impurity systems in the Kondo regime.The first system consists of a spin-1 molecule in which mechanical stretching along the transport axis produces a magnetic anisotropy.We find that a generic coupling between a vibrational mode along this axis and the molecular spin induces a correction to the magnetic anisotropy, driving the ground state of the system into a non-Fermi-liquid phase.A transition into a Fermi-liquid ground state can then be induced by means of stretching, going through an underscreened spin-1 Kondo ground state at zero effective anisotropy.In the second system we study the effects of a charge detector, implemented by a quantum point-contact (QPC), on the Kondo state of a nearby spin-1/2 quantum dot (QD).While making the charge detection possible, the Coulomb interaction between the electrons traversing the QPC and those within the QD contribute to decoherence of the Kondo state.By modeling the QPC as two metallic terminals connected to an intermediate localized level, we can explore three transport regimes of the detector: a zero-conductance regime, a finite-conductance regime in mixed valence, and unitary conductance in a Kondo ground state that has been suggested as an explanation to the "0.7 anomaly" in QPCs.Transitions between these different ground states can be achieved by tuning the strength of a capacitive coupling that parameterizes the electrostatic interaction.
The traditional multichannel Kondo effect takes place when several gapless metallic electronic channels interact with a localized spin-
S impurity, with the number of channels
n exceeding the size of the impurity spin,
n>2S, leading to the emergence of non-Fermi liquid impurity behavior at low temperatures. Here, we show that the effect can be realized even when the electronic degrees of freedom are strongly correlated and gapped. The system under consideration consists of a single spin-
21 impurity coupled isotropically to
n spin singlet superconducting channels realized by one-dimensional leads with quasi-long-range superconducting order. The competition between the Kondo and superconducting fluctuations induces multiple distinct ground states and boundary phases depending on the relative strengths of the bulk and boundary interactions. Using the Bethe Ansatz technique, we identify four regimes: an overscreened Kondo phase, a zero-mode phase, a Yu-Shiba-Rusinov (YSR) phase, and a local-moment phase with an unscreened impurity, each with its own experimental characteristic. We describe the renormalization-group flow, the excitation spectrum, and the full impurity thermodynamics in each phase. Remarkably, even in the presence of a bulk mass gap, the boundary critical behavior in the Kondo phase is governed by the same exponents as in the gapless theory with the low-energy impurity sector flowing to the
SU(2)n Wess-Zumino-Witten (WZW) fixed point, and the impurity entropy monotonically decreasing as a function of temperature. In both the overscreened Kondo and zero-mode phases, the residual impurity entropy is
Simp(T→0)=ln[2cos(π/(n+2))]. In the YSR and unscreened phases on the other hand the impurity entropy exhibits non-monotonic temperature dependence and is effectively free at low temperatures with
Simp(T→0)=ln2.