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arXiv:quant-ph/0601166 · Physical Review B

Entanglement of an impurity and conduction spins in the Kondo model

Sangchul Oh, Jaewan Kim

Published Feb 21, 2006• 22 citations
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Abstract

Based on Yosida's ground state of the single-impurity Kondo Hamiltonian, we study three kinds of entanglement between an impurity and conduction electron spins. First, it is shown that the impurity spin is maximally entangled with all the conduction electrons. Second, a two-spin density matrix of the impurity spin and one conduction electron spin is given by a Werner state. We find that the impurity spin is not entangled with one conduction electron spin even within the Kondo screening length ${\ensuremath{\xi}}_{K}$, although there is the spin-spin correlation between them. Third, we show the density matrix of two conduction electron spins is nearly the same as that of a free electron gas. The single impurity does not change the entanglement structure of the conduction electrons in contrast to the dramatic change in electrical resistance.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.73.052407

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Based on Yosida's ground state of the single-impurity Kondo Hamiltonian, we study three kinds of entanglement between an impurity and conduction electron spins. First, it is shown that the impurity spin is maximally entangled with all the conduction electrons. Second, a two-spin density matrix of the impurity spin and one conduction electron spin is given by a Werner state. We find that the impurity spin is not entangled with one conduction electron spin even within the Kondo screening length \ensuremathξK{\ensuremath{\xi}}_{K}\ensuremathξK​, although there is the spin-spin correlation between them. Third, we show the density matrix of two conduction electron spins is nearly the same as that of a free electron gas. The single impurity does not change the entanglement structure of the conduction electrons in contrast to the dramatic change in electrical resistance.
Two electronic channels competing to screen a single impurity spin, as in the two-channel Kondo model, are expected to generate a ground state with a nontrivial entanglement structure. We exploit a spin-chain representation of the two-channel Kondo model to probe the ground-state block entropy, negativity, tangle, and Schmidt gap, using a density matrix renormalization group approach. In the presence of symmetric coupling to the two channels, we confirm field-theory predictions for the boundary entropy difference ln(gUV/gIR)=ln(2)/2ln({g}_{\text{UV}}/{g}_{\text{IR}})=ln(2)/2ln(gUV​/gIR​)=ln(2)/2 between the ultraviolet and infrared limits and the leading ln(x)/xln(x)/xln(x)/x impurity correction to the block entropy. The impurity entanglement Simp{S}_{\text{imp}}Simp​ is shown to scale with the characteristic length ${\ensuremath{\xi}}_{2\text{CK}}$. We show that both the Schmidt gap and the entanglement of the impurity with one of the channels---as measured by the negativity---faithfully serve as order parameters for the impurity quantum phase transition appearing as a function of channel asymmetry, allowing for explicit determination of critical exponents, $\ensuremath{\nu}\ensuremath{\approx}2$ and $\ensuremath{\beta}\ensuremath{\approx}0.2$. Remarkably, we find the emergence of tripartite entanglement only in the vicinity of the critical channel-symmetric point.
We disentangle all the individual degrees of freedom in the quantum impurity problem to deconstruct the Kondo singlet, both in real and energy space, by studying the contribution of each individual free electron eigenstate. This is a problem of two spins coupled to a bath, where the bath is formed by the remaining conduction electrons. Being a mixed state, we resort to the ``concurrence'' to quantify entanglement. We identify ``projected natural orbitals'' that allow us to individualize a single-particle electronic wave function that is responsible of more than 9090%90 of the impurity screening. In the weak coupling regime, the impurity is entangled to an electron at the Fermi level, while in the strong coupling regime, the impurity counterintuitively entangles mostly with the high energy electrons and disentangles completely from the low-energy states carving a ``hole'' around the Fermi level. This enables one to use concurrence as a pseudo order parameter to compute the characteristic ``size'' of the Kondo cloud, beyond which electrons are weakly correlated to the impurity and are dominated by the physics of the boundary.
We propose that real-space properties of the two-impurity Kondo model can be obtained from an effective spin model where two single-impurity Kondo spin chains are joined via an Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) interaction between the two impurity spins. We then use a density matrix renormalization group approach, valid in all ranges of parameters, to study its features using two complementary quantum-entanglement measures, the negativity and the von Neumann entropy. This nonperturbative approach enables us to uncover the precise dependence of the spatial extent ξ(K) of the Kondo screening cloud with the Kondo and RKKY couplings. Our results reveal an exponential suppression of the Kondo temperature T(K)~1/ξ(K) with the size of the effective impurity spin in the limit of large ferromagnetic RKKY coupling, a striking display of "Kondo resonance narrowing" in the two-impurity Kondo model. We also show how the antiferromagnetic RKKY interaction produces an effective decoupling of the impurities from the bulk already for intermediate strengths of this interaction, and, furthermore, exhibit how the non-Fermi liquid quantum critical point is signaled in the quantum entanglement between various parts of the system.
When a local impurity spin interacts with conduction electrons whose density of states (DOS) has a (pseudo)gap or diverges at the Fermi energy, a local moment (LM) phase can be favored over a Kondo phase. Theoretically studying quantum entanglement between the impurity and conduction electrons, we demonstrate that conduction electrons form an LM spin cloud in general LM phases, which corresponds to, but has a fundamental difference from, the Kondo cloud screening the impurity spin in the Kondo phase. The LM cloud algebraically decays over the distance from the impurity when the DOS has a pseudogap or divergence, and exponentially when it has a hard gap. We find an LM cloud length, a single length scale characterizing a universal form of the LM cloud. The findings are supported by both analytic theories and numerical computations.
Entanglement is a defining feature of quantum mechanics, and its relation to quantum criticality is of considerable current interest. Here we show that measurable spin and charge fluctuations provide an entanglement witness of quantum criticality in the two-impurity Kondo model, which has experimental realizations in terms of coupled quantum dots and magnetic impurities added to surfaces. We use density-matrix renormalization group and numerical renormalization group calculations to resolve the non-Fermi-liquid critical point separating two independently Kondo-screened impurities from an inter-impurity singlet and interpret it as a change in the dominant entanglement partner of each local moment: from entanglement of the local moment with an extended set of conduction-electron degrees of freedom to entanglement with the other impurity. This reorganization is accompanied by a singular response of the impurity-bath entanglement and the inter-impurity susceptibility. We show how the same structure is encoded in the quantum Fisher information of collective spin and charge operators at zero and finite temperatures, connecting the entanglement picture to experimentally accessible dynamical response functions. Our results establish impurity systems as controlled settings in which quantum-critical entanglement can be detected through measurable correlations, and provide further insight into the possibility of understanding heavy-fermion physics in terms of entanglement.
We investigate the entanglement properties of a Kondo system undergoing a transition to a state with a quenched magnetic impurity, using the density matrix renormalization group method. We focus on a two-channel spin-1 Kondo impurity with single-ion anisotropy, where a quantum phase transition occurs between two topologically distinct local Fermi liquids. In the fully screened Kondo phase, realized at lower anisotropies, the entangled region surrounding the magnetic impurity mimics the Kondo screening cloud, although its length does not follow the conventional behavior. In contrast, beyond the transition, the system enters a non-Landau Fermi liquid phase with a markedly different entanglement structure: As the impurity is quenched and disentangled from the rest of the system due to the breakdown of the Kondo effect, the two conduction channels---coupled only through the impurity---develop a significant degree of entanglement with one another. Our findings demonstrate that a quenched magnetic impurity can passively and efficiently mediate entanglement between spatially separated conduction bands.