We analyze the two-Anderson-impurity problem, in the strong-Coulomb-repulsion limit, by means of variational wave functions whose equations we solve analytically. We found two pairs of doublet states, one odd and one even with respect to the midplane between the impurities. These doublets make a significatively strong use of the hybridization terms of the Hamiltonian and have a much larger Kondo-like correlation energy than a single impurity (the Kondo energy). Furthermore, these doublets combine to form a supersinglet. This supersinglet makes use of the remaining hybridization probability to improve its energy with respect to the doublet energy, but for low-dimensional systems and at the interimpurity distances where the doublets are fully developed, its energy gain is exponentially small. The interaction behind the doublets is a first-order (in the effective Kondo coupling) one; it also generates a parallel alignment of the impurity spins. This ferromagnetic impurity-impurity response is thus generated without resort to the RKKY interaction. The effective range of this first-order Doublet interaction is also much larger than the one of the RKKY interaction.
We analyze the two-Anderson-impurity problem, in the strong-Coulomb-repulsion limit, by means of variational wave functions whose equations we solve analytically. We found two pairs of doublet states, one odd and one even with respect to the midplane between the impurities. These doublets make a significatively strong use of the hybridization terms of the Hamiltonian and have a much larger Kondo-like correlation energy than a single impurity (the Kondo energy). Furthermore, these doublets combine to form a supersinglet. This supersinglet makes use of the remaining hybridization probability to improve its energy with respect to the doublet energy, but for low-dimensional systems and at the interimpurity distances where the doublets are fully developed, its energy gain is exponentially small. The interaction behind the doublets is a first-order (in the effective Kondo coupling) one; it also generates a parallel alignment of the impurity spins. This ferromagnetic impurity-impurity response is thus generated without resort to the RKKY interaction. The effective range of this first-order Doublet interaction is also much larger than the one of the RKKY interaction.
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.
The system of several (N) quantum dots coupled in parallel to the same single-mode conduction channel can be modeled as a single-channel N-impurity Anderson model. Using the generalized Schrieffer-Wolff transformation we show that near the particle-hole symmetric point, the effective Hamiltonian in the local moment regime is the N-impurity S=1∕2 Kondo model. The conduction-band-mediated RKKY exchange interaction between the dots is ferromagnetic and at intermediate temperatures locks the moments into a maximal spin S=N∕2 ground state. We provide an analytical estimate for the RKKY interaction. At low temperatures the spin is partially screened by the conduction electrons to $N∕2\ensuremath{-}1∕2$ due to the Kondo effect. By comparing accurate numerical renormalization group results for magnetic susceptibility of the N-impurity Anderson model to the exact Bethe ansatz results of a S=N∕2 SU(2) Kondo system we show that at low-temperature the quantum dots can be described by the effective S=N∕2 Kondo model. Moreover, the Kondo temperature is independent of the number of impurities N. We demonstrate the robustness of the spin N∕2 ground state as well as of the associated S=N∕2 Kondo effect by studying the stability of the system with respect to various experimentally relevant perturbations. We finally explore various quantum phase transitions driven by these perturbations.
We show that the RKKY interaction in the two-impurity Anderson model comprise two contributions: a ferromagnetic part stemming from the symmetrized hybridization functions and an antiferromagnetic part. We demonstrate that this antiferromagnetic contribution can also be generated by an effective local tunneling term between the two impurities. This tunneling can be analytically calculated for particle-hole symmetric impurities. Replacing the full hybridization functions by the symmetric part and this tunneling term leads to the identical low-temperature fixed point spectrum in the numerical renormalization group. Compensating this tunneling term allows us to restore the Varma-Jones quantum critical point between a strong-coupling phase and a local singlet phase even in the absence of particle-hole symmetry in the hybridization functions. We analytically investigate the spatial frequencies of the effective tunneling term based on the combination of the band dispersion and the shape of the Fermi surface. Numerical renormalization group calculations provide a comparison of the distance-dependent tunneling term and the local spin-spin correlation function. Deviations between the spatial dependency of the full spin-spin correlation function and the textbook RKKY interaction are reported.
We investigate a model of two Kondo impurities coupled via an Ising interaction. Exploiting the mapping to a generalized single-impurity Anderson model, we establish that the model has a singlet and a (pseudospin) doublet phase separated by a Kosterlitz-Thouless quantum phase transition. Based on a strong-coupling analysis and renormalization-group arguments, we show that at this transition the conductance G through the system either displays a zero-bias anomaly, $G\ensuremath{\sim}{\ensuremath{\mid}V\ensuremath{\mid}}^{\ensuremath{-}2(\sqrt{2}\ensuremath{-}1)}$, or takes a universal value, $G=({e}^{2}∕\ensuremath{\pi}\ensuremath{\hbar}){\mathrm{cos}}^{2}(\ensuremath{\pi}∕2\sqrt{2})$, depending on the experimental setup. Close to the Toulouse point of the individual Kondo impurities, the strong-coupling analysis allows us to obtain the location of the phase boundary analytically. For general model parameters, we determine the phase diagram and investigate the thermodynamics using numerical renormalization-group calculations. In the singlet phase close to the quantum phase transition, the entropy is quenched in two steps: first the two Ising-coupled spins form a magnetic minidomain which is, in a second step, screened by a Kondoesque collective resonance in an effective solitonic Fermi sea. In addition, we present a flow-equation analysis which provides a different mapping of the two-impurity model to a generalized single-impurity Anderson model in terms of fully renormalized couplings, which is applicable for the whole range of model parameters.
By means of a projector operator formalism we study the ground state properties of the Anderson Impurity Hamiltonian. The non-perturbative treatment of the model agrees with the previous one, obtained by Inagaki [Prog. Theor. Phys. 62, 1441 (1979)] by means of a perturbation expansion with respect the hybridization term. We go beyond the Inagaki's formalism to the next leading order. It provides a very accurate calculation of the energy spectrum in the total spin sector and, in particular, the ground state energy in the whole parameter space. For a one body spinless system, the dependence of the ground state energy as a function of the impurity level obtained by this procedure remarkably agrees with analytical results. For the many body case the occupancy of the impurity as a function of the parameters is studied and it agrees with the corresponding one obtained by using the Bethe ansatz and the Numerical Renormalization Group solution of the Hamiltonian. The magnetization and susceptibility of the impurity is analyzed by studying the response of the system to an external magnetic field, from which it is possible to extract the Kondo temperature. The dependence of the Kondo scale with the parameters of the model is in excellent agreement with well-known results.
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.