Using different techniques, and Fermi-liquid relationships, we calculate the variation with the applied magnetic field (up to second order) of the zero-temperature equilibrium conductance through a quantum dot described by the impurity Anderson model. We focus on the strong-coupling limit $U\ensuremath{\gg}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}$, where
U is the Coulomb repulsion and $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}$ is half the resonant-level width, and consider several values of the dot level energy
Ed, ranging from the Kondo regime ${\ensuremath{\epsilon}}_{F}\ensuremath{-}{E}_{d}\ensuremath{\gg}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}$ to the intermediate-valence regime ${\ensuremath{\epsilon}}_{F}\ensuremath{-}{E}_{d}\ensuremath{\sim}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}$, where ${\ensuremath{\epsilon}}_{F}$ is the Fermi energy. We have mainly used the density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) and the numerical renormalization group (NRG) combined with renormalized perturbation theory (RPT). Results for the dot occupancy and magnetic susceptibility from the DMRG and
NRG+RPT are compared with the corresponding Bethe ansatz results for $U\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$, showing an excellent agreement once
Ed is renormalized by a constant Haldane shift. For $U<3\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}$ a simple perturbative approach in
U agrees very well with the other methods. The conductance decreases with the applied magnetic field for dot occupancies ${n}_{d}\ensuremath{\sim}1$ and increases for ${n}_{d}\ensuremath{\sim}0.5$ or ${n}_{d}\ensuremath{\sim}1.5$ regardless of the value of
U. We also relate the energy scale for the magnetic-field dependence of the conductance with the width of the low-energy peak in the spectral density of the dot.
Resonant tunneling through quantum dot under a finite bias voltage at zero temperature is investigated by using the adaptive time-dependent density matrix renormalization group(TdDMRG) method. Quantum dot is modeled by the Anderson Hamiltonian with the 1-D nearest-neighbor tight-binding leads. Initially the ground state wave function is calculated with the usual DMRG method. Then the time evolution of the wave function due to the slowly changing bias voltage between the two leads is calculated by using the TdDMRG technique. Even though the system size is finite, the expectation values of current operator show steady-like behavior for a finite time interval, in which the system is expected to resemble the real nonequilibrium steady state of the infinitely long system. We show that from the time intervals one can obtain quantitatively correct results for differential conductance in a wide range of bias voltage. Finally we observe an anomalous behavior in the expectation value of the double occupation operator at the dot $$ as a function of bias voltage.
Recent developments in the theoretical investigation of the one-dimensional Kondo lattice model by using the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method are discussed in this review. Short summaries are given of the zero-temperature DMRG method, the finite-temperature DMRG method, and also the application of the finite- T DMRG to dynamic quantities. Away from half-filling, the paramagnetic metallic state is shown to be a Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid with a large Fermi surface. The size of the large Fermi surface is determined by the sum of the densities of the conduction electrons and the localized spins. The correlation exponent of this metallic phase is smaller than 1/2. At half-filling the ground state is insulating. The excitation gaps are different, depending on the channels, the spin gap, the charge gap and the quasiparticle gap. The temperature dependence of the spin and charge susceptibilities and the specific heat are discussed. Particularly interesting is the temperature dependence of various excitation spectra, which indicates unusual properties for the Kondo insulators.
We study the nonequilibrium transport properties of fully (exactly) screened Kondo quantum dots subject to a finite bias voltage or a finite temperature. First, we calculate the Fermi-liquid coefficients of the conductance for models with arbitrary spin, i.e., its leading behavior for small bias voltages or temperatures. Second, we determine the low-temperature behavior of the static susceptibility from the exactly known Bethe ansatz results for the magnetization. Third, we study the crossover from strong to weak coupling in the spin-1/2 and the spin-1 models coupled to one or two screening channels, respectively. Using a real-time renormalization group method we calculate the static and dynamical spin-spin correlation functions for the spin-1/2 model as well as the linear and differential conductance and the static susceptibility for the spin-1 model. We define various Kondo scales and discuss their relations. We assess the validity of the renormalization-group treatment by comparing with known results for the temperature dependence of the linear conductance and static susceptibility as well as the Fermi-liquid behavior at low energies.
A procedure based on the recently developed ``adaptive'' time-dependent density-matrix-renormalization-group (DMRG) technique is presented to calculate the zero temperature conductance of nanostructures, such as quantum dots (QDs) or molecular conductors, when represented by a small number of active levels. The leads are modeled using noninteracting tight-binding Hamiltonians. The ground state at time zero is calculated at zero bias. Then, a small bias is applied between the two leads, the wave function is DMRG evolved in time, and currents are measured as a function of time. Typically, the current is expected to present periodicities over long times, involving intermediate well-defined plateaus that resemble steady states. The conductance can be obtained from those steady-state-like currents. To test this approach, several cases of interacting and noninteracting systems have been studied. Our results show excellent agreement with exact results in the noninteracting case. More importantly, the technique also reproduces quantitatively well-established results for the conductance and local density of states in both the cases of one and two coupled interacting QDs. The technique also works at finite bias voltages, and it can be extended to include interactions in the leads.
We apply the adaptive time-dependent density-matrix renormalization-group method (tDMRG) to the study of transport properties of quantum-dot systems connected to metallic leads. Finite-size effects make the usual tDMRG description of the Kondo regime a numerically demanding task. We show that such effects can be attenuated by describing the leads by ``Wilson chains,'' in which the hopping matrix elements decay exponentially away from the impurity $({t}_{n}\ensuremath{\propto}{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}^{\ensuremath{-}n/2})$. For a given system size and in the linear-response regime, results for $\ensuremath{\Lambda}>1$ show several improvements over the undamped $\ensuremath{\Lambda}=1$ case: perfect conductance is obtained deeper in the strongly interacting regime and current plateaus remain well defined for longer time scales. Similar improvements were obtained in the finite-bias regime up to bias voltages of the order of the Kondo temperature. These results show that with the proposed modification, the tDMRG characterization of Kondo correlations in the transport properties can be substantially improved, while it turns out to be sufficient to work with much smaller system sizes. We discuss the numerical cost of this approach with respect to the necessary system sizes and the entanglement growth during the time evolution.