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Physical Review Letters

Exact critical theory of the two-impurity Kondo model

Ian K. Affleck, Andreas W. W. Ludwig

Published Feb 17, 1992• 191 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The two-impurity Kondo Hamiltonian is known to possess a multicritical point separating stable Fermi-liquid phases in which the two impurities either form a singlet or else are screened by the conduction electrons. We propose an exact critical theory for this non-Fermi-liquid multicritical point, using conformal field theory methods, which predicts all critical properties including the finite-size spectrum, specific heat, susceptibilities, renormalization-group behavior, residual entropy, scattering matrix, and local pair Green's function.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.68.1046

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The two-impurity Kondo Hamiltonian is known to possess a multicritical point separating stable Fermi-liquid phases in which the two impurities either form a singlet or else are screened by the conduction electrons. We propose an exact critical theory for this non-Fermi-liquid multicritical point, using conformal field theory methods, which predicts all critical properties including the finite-size spectrum, specific heat, susceptibilities, renormalization-group behavior, residual entropy, scattering matrix, and local pair Green's function.
Numerical renormalization-group and conformal-field-theory work indicate that the two-impurity Kondo Hamiltonian has a non-Fermi-liquid critical point separating the Kondo-screening phase from the interimpurity singlet phase when particle-hole (P-H) symmetry is maintained. We clarify the circumstances under which this critical point occurs, pointing out that there are two types of P-H symmetry. Only one of them guarantees the occurrence of the critical point. Much of the previous numerical work was done on models with the other type of P-H symmetry. We analyze this critical point using the boundary conformal-field-theory technique. The finite-size spectrum is presented in detail and compared with about 50 energy levels obtained using the numerical renormalization group. Various Green's functions, general renormalization group behavior, and a hidden SO(7) are analyzed.
An asymptotically exact solution is presented for the two-impurity Kondo model for a finite region of the parameter space surrounding the critical point. This region is located in the most interesting intermediate regime where the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) interaction is comparable to the Kondo temperature. After several exact simplifications involving reduction to one dimension and Abelian bosonization, the critical point is explicitly identified, making clear its physical origin. By using controlled low-energy projection, an effective Hamiltonian is derived for the finite region in the phase diagram around the critical point. The completeness of the effective Hamiltonian is rigorously proved from general symmetry considerations. The effective Hamiltonian is solved exactly not only at the critical point but also for the surrounding Fermi-liquid phase. Analytic crossover functions from the critical to Fermi-liquid behavior are derived for the specific heat and staggered susceptibility. It is shown that applying a uniform magnetic field has negligible effect on the physical behavior inside our solution region. A detailed comparison is made with the numerical renormalization-group and conformal-field-theory results. The excellent agreement is exploited to argue for the universality of the critical point, which in turn implies universal behavior everywhere inside our solution region.
The two-channel Kondo Hamiltonian has recently been proposed as a description of several experimental systems. Our numerical renormalization-group treatment of a pair of magnetic impurities shows that at low temperatures, interimpurity interactions destabilize the ``marginal-Fermi-liquid'' behavior predicted by a single-impurity model. We find four stable zero-temperature regimes, three of which can be described by Fermi-liquid theory. The fourth possesses a complex many-body ground state and non-Fermi-liquid properties which are expected to be governed by nonuniversal critical exponents.
We consider the non-Fermi-liquid quantum critical state of the spin-S two-impurity Kondo model and its potential realization in a quantum dot device. Using conformal field theory and the numerical renormalization group, we show the critical point to be identical to that of the two-channel Kondo model with additional potential scattering, for any spin S. Distinct conductance signatures are shown to arise as a function of device asymmetry, with the square-root behavior commonly believed to arise at low-energies dominant only in certain regimes.
We consider the single-channel Kondo problem with the Kondo coupling between a spin SSS impurity and conduction electrons with spin jjj. These problems arise as multicritical points in the parameter spaces of two-and higher-level tunneling systems and some impurity models of heavy fermion compounds. In contrast to the previous Bethe-ansatz conjectures, it turns out that the dynamics of the spin sector is the same as that of a spin-SSS impurity coupled to k(j)k(j)k(j) channels of spin-\textonehalf{} electrons with k(j)=2j(j+1)(2j+1)3k(j)=2\frac{j(j+1)(2j+1)}{3}k(j)=23j(j+1)(2j+1)​. As a result, for 2S<k(j)2S<k(j)2S<k(j), the system shows non-Fermi-liquid behavior with the same exponents for the thermodynamic quantities as those of the k(j)k(j)k(j)-channel Kondo problem. However, both the finite-size spectrum and the operator content are different due to the presence of the other sectors and can be obtained by conformal field theory techniques.
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.