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arXiv:cond-mat/0310222 · Physical Review B

Quantum phase transition of Ising-coupled Kondo impurities

Markus Garst, Stefan K. Kehrein, Thomas Pruschke, Achim Rosch, Matthias Vojta C

Published Jun 18, 2004• 52 citations
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Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.69.214413

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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 GGG through the system either displays a zero-bias anomaly, G\ensuremath∼\ensuremath∣V\ensuremath∣\ensuremath−2(2\ensuremath−1)G\ensuremath{\sim}{\ensuremath{\mid}V\ensuremath{\mid}}^{\ensuremath{-}2(\sqrt{2}\ensuremath{-}1)}G\ensuremath∼\ensuremath∣V\ensuremath∣\ensuremath−2(2​\ensuremath−1), or takes a universal value, G=(e2∕\ensuremathπ\ensuremathℏ)cos2(\ensuremathπ∕22)G=({e}^{2}∕\ensuremath{\pi}\ensuremath{\hbar}){\mathrm{cos}}^{2}(\ensuremath{\pi}∕2\sqrt{2})G=(e2∕\ensuremathπ\ensuremathℏ)cos2(\ensuremathπ∕22​), 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.
We discuss models of interacting magnetic impurities coupled to a metallic host, which show one or more boundary quantum phase transitions where the ground-state spin changes as a function of the interimpurity couplings. The simplest example is realized by two spin-12\frac{1}{2}21​ Kondo impurities coupled to a single orbital of the host. We investigate the phase diagram and crossover behavior of this model and present numerical renormalization-group results together with general arguments showing that the singlet-doublet quantum phase transition is either of first order or of the Kosterlitz-Thouless type, depending on the symmetry of the Kondo couplings. Thus we find an exponentially small energy scale within the Kondo regime, and a two-stage Kondo effect, in a single-channel situation. Connections to other models and possible applications are discussed.
Quantum impurity models are the prototypical examples of quantum many-body dynamics which manifests in their spectral and transport properties. Single channel Anderson(and Kondo model) leads to the Fermi liquid ground state in the strong coupling regime which corresponds to a stable infrared fixed point at which the quantum impurity gets completely screened by the conduction electrons. Quantum impurity models with non-trivial density of states exhibit quantum phase transition and this quantum criticality lies in the universality class of local quantum critical systems. In this paper, we report first study of the flow equation renormalization of gapped Kondo model which has gapped density of states, the gap being at the Fermi level. Flow equation renormalization group method has proved to be one of the very robust renormalization methods to study Kondo physics both in equilibrium as well as in non-equilibrium. Here we have shown that this method can also be employed to study local quantum criticality. We have calculated the flow equations for the Kondo coupling and solved them for various values of the gap parameter and we find that there is suppression of Kondo divergence as gap is increased which signifies that as gap is increased, renormalization flow goes away from the strong coupling fixed point. We have also calculated the spin susceptibility and we find that as gap is increased, susceptibility goes over to the Curie behaviour and hence confirming the renormalization flow towards the local moment fixed point.
We revisit the physics of a Kondo impurity coupled to a fermionic host with a diverging power-law density of states near the Fermi level, $\ensuremath{\rho}(\ensuremath{\omega})\ensuremath{\sim}{|\ensuremath{\omega}|}^{r}$, with exponent $\ensuremath{-}1<r<0$. Using the analytical understanding of several fixed points, based partially on powerful mappings between models with bath exponents rrr and $(\ensuremath{-}r)$, combined with accurate numerical renormalization group calculations, we determine thermodynamic quantities within the stable phases and also near the various quantum phase transitions. Antiferromagnetic Kondo coupling leads to strong screening with a negative zero-temperature impurity entropy, while ferromagnetic Kondo coupling can induce a stable fractional spin moment. We formulate the quantum field theories for all critical fixed points of the problem, which are fermionic in nature and allow for a perturbative renormalization-group treatment.
We generalize Nozi\`eres' Fermi-liquid theory for the low-energy behavior of the Kondo model to that of the single-impurity Anderson model. In addition to the electrons' phase shift at the Fermi energy, the low-energy Fermi-liquid theory is characterized by four Fermi-liquid parameters: the two given by Nozi\`eres that enter to first order in the excitation energy, and two additional ones that enter to second order and are needed away from particle-hole symmetry. We express all four parameters in terms of zero-temperature physical observables, namely the local charge and spin susceptibilities and their derivatives with respect to the local level position. We determine these in terms of the bare parameters of the Anderson model using Bethe ansatz and numerical renormalization group (NRG) calculations. Our low-energy Fermi-liquid theory applies throughout the crossover from the strong-coupling Kondo regime via the mixed-valence regime to the empty-orbital regime. From the Fermi-liquid theory, we determine the conductance through a quantum dot symmetrically coupled to two leads in the regime of small magnetic field, low temperature, and small bias voltage, and compute the coefficients of the $\ensuremath{\sim}{B}^{2}, \ensuremath{\sim}{T}^{2}$, and $\ensuremath{\sim}{V}^{2}$ terms exactly in terms of the Fermi-liquid parameters. The coefficients of T2,V2{T}^{2}, {V}^{2}T2,V2, and B2{B}^{2}B2 are found to change sign during the Kondo to empty-orbital crossover. The crossover becomes universal in the limit that the local interaction is much larger than the level width. For completeness, we also compute the shot noise and discuss the resulting Fano factor.
We study a pseudogap Anderson-Holstein model of a magnetic impurity level that hybridizes with a conduction band whose density of states vanishes in power-law fashion at the Fermi energy, and couples, via its charge, to a nondispersive bosonic mode (e.g., an optical phonon). The model, which we treat using poor-man's scaling and the numerical renormalization group, exhibits quantum phase transitions of different types depending on the strength of the impurity-boson coupling. For weak impurity-boson coupling, the suppression of the density of states near the Fermi energy leads to quantum phase transitions between strong-coupling (Kondo) and local-moment phases. For sufficiently strong impurity-boson coupling, however, the bare repulsion between a pair of electrons in the impurity level becomes an effective attraction, leading to quantum phase transitions between strong-coupling (charge Kondo) and local-charge phases. Even though the Hamiltonian exhibits different symmetries in the spin and charge sectors, the thermodynamic properties near the two types of quantum phase transition are closely related under spin-charge interchange. Moreover, the critical responses to a local magnetic field (for small impurity-boson coupling) and to an electric potential (for large impurity-boson coupling) are characterized by the same exponents, whose values place these quantum-critical points in the universality class of the pseudogap Anderson model. One specific case of the pseudogap Anderson-Holstein model may be realized in a double-quantum-dot device, where the quantum phase transitions manifest themselves in the finite-temperature linear electrical conductance.