Kondo Proximity Effect: How Does a Metal Penetrate into a Mott Insulator?
R. W. Helmes, Theo A. Costi, Achim Rosch
We consider a heterostructure of a metal and a paramagnetic Mott insulator using an adaptation of dynamical mean-field theory to describe inhomogeneous systems. The metal can penetrate into the insulator via the Kondo effect. We investigate the scaling properties of the metal-insulator interface close to the critical point of the Mott insulator. At criticality, the quasiparticle weight decays as 1/x;{2} with distance x from the metal within our mean-field theory. Our numerical results (using the numerical renormalization group as an impurity solver) show that the prefactor of this power law is extremely small.
arXiv:0805.0566•Physical Review Letters•Aug 6, 2008•79 citations