The Kondo effect in a repulsively interacting electron system (Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid) is studied. By using the poor man's scaling method it is shown that the Kondo coupling in this model flows to the strong-coupling regime not only for the antiferromagnetic but also for the ferromagnetic case. The ground state is governed by stable strong-coupling fixed points where the impurity spin is completely screened; the fixed-point Hamiltonian consists of two semi-infinite Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids and a spin singlet. Specific heat, susceptibility, and conductance are calculated for low temperatures.
To study the impurity potential effect to the Kondo problem in a Luttinger liquid, we propose an integrable model of two interacting half-chains coupled with a single magnetic impurity ferromagnetically. It is shown that the scalar potential effectively reconciles the spin dynamics at low temperatures. Generally, there is a competition between the Kondo coupling J and the impurity potential V. When the ferromagnetic Kondo coupling dominates over the impurity potential
(V<∣SJ∣), the Furusaki-Nagaosa many-body singlet can be perfectly realized. However, when the impurity potential dominates over the Kondo coupling
(V> ∣SJ∣), the fixed point predicted by Furusaki and Nagaosa is unstable and the system must flow to a weak-coupling fixed point. It is also found that the effective moment of the impurity measured from the susceptibility is considerably enlarged by the impurity potential. In addition, some quantum phase transitions driven by the impurity potential are found and the anomaly residual entropy is discussed.
We study a system consisting of a junction of
N wires, where the junction is characterized by a scalar
S-matrix, and an impurity spin is coupled to the electrons near the junction. The wires are modeled as weakly interacting Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids. We derive the renormalization group (RG) equations for the Kondo couplings of the spin to the electrons on different wires. We analyze the RG flows and fixed points for different values of the initial Kondo couplings and of the junction
S-matrix, such as the decoupled
S-matrix and the Griffiths (connected)
S-matrix. We find that the Kondo couplings flow either towards a ferromagnetic (FM) fixed point or towards large and antiferromagnetic (AFM) values in one of two ways. For the Griffiths
S-matrix, one of the strong coupling flows is towards a FM fixed point with decoupled wires; this is seen by a perturbative analysis. Thus if we start with a system of connected wires with an AFM coupling to the spin impurity, the flow at large distances is towards a system of disconnected wires at the FM fixed point. For the decoupled
S-matrix, the flow is either to a FM fixed point or to one of two strong coupling fixed points in which all the channels are strongly coupled to each other through the impurity spin. Strong interactions between the electrons with ${K}_{\ensuremath{\rho}}<N∕(N+2)$ can stabilize a multichannel fixed point in which the coupling between different channels goes to zero. We also study the temperature dependence of the conductance at the decoupled and Griffiths
S-matrices.
We study a system of an impurity spin coupled to a junction of several Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids using a renormalization group scheme. By starting close to the decoupled S-matrix at the junction, we find a new stable fixed point at a finite ferromagnetic value of the Kondo coupling, for repulsive inter-electron interactions; this leads to the possibility of spin-flip scatterings even at the lowest temperatures. If the junction is governed by the Gri_ths S-matrix, we find that the Kondo coupling flows to the strong coupling fixed point (Furusaki-Nagaosa point) where all the wires are decoupled and the conductance vanishes at zero temperature.
The stability of the Luttinger liquid to small transverse hopping has been studied from several points of view. The renormalization group approach in particular has been criticized because it does not take explicitly into account the difference between spin and charge velocities and because the interaction should be turned-on before the transverse hopping if the stability of the Luttinger liquid is a non-perturbative effect. An approach that answers both of these objections is explained here. It shows that the Luttinger liquid is unstable to arbitrarily small transverse hopping. The crossover temperatures below which either transverse coherent band motion or long-range order start to develop can be finite even when spin and charge velocities differ. Explicit scaling relations for these one-particle and two-particle crossover temperatures are derived in terms of transverse hopping, spin and charge velocities and anomalous exponents. The renormalization group results are recovered as special cases when spin and charge velocities are identical. The results compare well with recent experiments presented at this conference. Magnetic field effects are alluded to.
A quantum Monte Carlo simulation method has been developed and applied to study the critical behavior of a single Kondo impurity in a Luttinger liquid. This numerically exact method has no finite-size limitations and allows to simulate the whole temperature range. Focusing on the impurity magnetic susceptibility, we determine the scaling functions, in particular for temperatures well below the Kondo temperature. In the absence of elastic potential scattering, we find Fermi-liquid behavior for strong electron-electron interactions,
gc<21, and anomalous power laws for
21<gc<1, where
gc is the correlation parameter of the Luttinger liquid. These findings resolve a recent controversy. If elastic potential scattering is present, we find a logarithmically divergent impurity susceptibility at
gc<21 that can be rationalized in terms of the two-channel Kondo model.