arXiv subjects

J. von Delft

Publications and source records attributed to J. von Delft.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2021

Differentiating Hund from Mott physics in a three-band Hubbard-Hund model: Temperature dependence of spectral, transport, and thermodynamic properties

We study the interplay between Mott physics, driven by Coulomb repulsion U, and Hund physics, driven by Hund's coupling J, for a minimal model for Hund metals, the orbital-symmetric three-band Hubbard-Hund model (3HHM) for a lattice filling of 1/3. Hund-correlated metals are characterized by spin-orbital separation (SOS), a Hund's-rule-induced two-stage Kondo-type screening process, in which spin screening occurs at much lower energy scales than orbital screening. By contrast, in Mott-correlated metals, lying close to the phase boundary of a metal-insulator transition, the SOS window becomes negligibly small and the Hubbard bands are well separated. Using dynamical mean-field theory and the numerical renormalization group as real-frequency impurity solver, we identify numerous fingerprints distinguishing Hundness from Mottness in the temperature dependence of various physical quantities. These include ARPES-type spectra, the local self-energy, static local orbital and spin susceptibilities, resistivity, thermopower, and lattice and impurity entropies. Our detailed description of the behavior of these quantities within the context of a simple model Hamiltonian will be helpful for distinguishing Hundness from Mottness in experimental and theoretical studies of real materials.

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arXiv2020

Uncovering Non-Fermi-Liquid Behavior in Hund Metals: Conformal Field Theory Analysis of an SU(2)$\times$SU(3) Spin-Orbital Kondo Model

Hund metals have attracted attention in recent years due to their unconventional superconductivity, which supposedly originates from non-Fermi-liquid (NFL) properties of the normal state. When studying Hund metals using dynamical mean-field theory, one arrives at a self-consistent "Hund impurity problem" involving a multiorbital quantum impurity with nonzero Hund coupling interacting with a metallic bath. If its spin and orbital degrees of freedom are screened at different energy scales, $T_\mathrm{sp} < T_\mathrm{orb}$, the intermediate energy window is governed by a novel NFL fixed point, whose nature had not yet been clarified. We resolve this problem by providing an analytical solution of a paradigmatic example of a Hund impurity problem, involving two spin and three orbital degrees of freedom. To this end, we combine a state-of-the-art implementation of the numerical renormalization group, capable of exploiting non-Abelian symmetries, with a generalization of Affleck and Ludwig's conformal field theory (CFT) approach for multichannel Kondo models. We characterize the NFL fixed point of Hund metals in detail for a Kondo model with an impurity forming an SU(2)$\times$SU(3) spin-orbital multiplet, tuned such that the NFL energy window is very wide. The impurity's spin and orbital susceptibilities then exhibit striking power-law behavior, which we explain using CFT arguments. We find excellent agreement between CFT predictions and numerical renormalization group results. Our main physical conclusion is that the regime of spin-orbital separation, where orbital degrees of freedom have been screened but spin degrees of freedom have not, features anomalously strong local spin fluctuations: the impurity susceptibility increases as $χ_\mathrm{sp}^\mathrm{imp} \sim ω^{-γ}$, with $γ> 1$.

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arXiv2019

Global phase diagram of a spin-orbital Kondo impurity model and the suppression of Fermi-liquid scale

Many correlated metallic materials are described by Landau Fermi-liquid theory at low energies, but for Hund metals the Fermi-liquid coherence scale $T_{\text{FL}}$ is found to be surprisingly small. In this Letter, we study the simplest impurity model relevant for Hund metals, the three-channel spin-orbital Kondo model, using the numerical renormalization group (NRG) method and compute its global phase diagram. In this framework, $T_{\text{FL}}$ becomes arbitrarily small close to two new quantum critical points (QCPs) which we identify by tuning the spin or spin-orbital Kondo couplings into the ferromagnetic regimes. We find quantum phase transitions to a singular Fermi-liquid or a novel non-Fermi-liquid phase. The new non-Fermi-liquid phase shows frustrated behavior involving alternating overscreenings in spin and orbital sectors, with universal power laws in the spin ($ω^{-1/5}$), orbital ($ω^{1/5}$) and spin-orbital ($ω^1$) dynamical susceptibilities. These power laws, and the NRG eigenlevel spectra, can be fully understood using conformal field theory arguments, which also clarify the nature of the non-Fermi-liquid phase.

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arXiv2016

Low-temperature behavior of transmission phase shift across a Kondo correlated quantum dot

We study the transmission phase shift across a Kondo correlated quantum dot in a GaAs heterostructure at temperatures below the Kondo temperature ($T < T_{\rm K}$), where the phase shift is expected to show a plateau at $π/2$ for an ideal Kondo singlet ground state. Our device is tuned such that the ratio $Γ/U$ of level width $Γ$ to charging energy $U$ is quite large ($\lesssim 0.5$ rather than $\ll 1$). This situation is commonly used in GaAs quantum dots to ensure Kondo temperatures large enough ($\simeq 100$ mK here) to be experimentally accessible; however it also implies that charge fluctuations are more pronounced than typically assumed in theoretical studies focusing on the regime $Γ/U \ll 1$ needed to ensure a well-defined local moment. Our measured phase evolves monotonically by $π$ across the two Coulomb peaks, but without being locked at $π/2$ in the Kondo valley for $T \ll T_{\rm K}$, due to a significant influence of large $Γ/U$. Only when $Γ/U$ is reduced sufficiently does the phase start to be locked around $π/2$ and develops into a plateau at $π/2$. Our observations are consistent with numerical renormalization group calculations, and can be understood as a direct consequence of the Friedel sum rule that relates the transmission phase shift to the local occupancy of the dot, and thermal average of a transmission coefficient through a resonance level near the Fermi energy.

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arXiv2016

Interleaved numerical renormalization group as an efficient multiband impurity solver

Quantum impurity problems can be solved using the numerical renormalization group (NRG), which involves discretizing the free conduction electron system and mapping to a `Wilson chain'. It was shown recently that Wilson chains for different electronic species can be interleaved by use of a modified discretization, dramatically increasing the numerical efficiency of the RG scheme [Phys. Rev. B 89, 121105(R) (2014)]. Here we systematically examine the accuracy and efficiency of the `interleaved' NRG (iNRG) method in the context of the single impurity Anderson model, the two-channel Kondo model, and a three-channel Anderson-Hund model. The performance of iNRG is explicitly compared with `standard' NRG (sNRG): when the average number of states kept per iteration is the same in both calculations, the accuracy of iNRG is equivalent to that of sNRG but the computational costs are signifficantly lower in iNRG when the same symmetries are exploited. Although iNRG weakly breaks SU(N) channel symmetry (if present), both accuracy and numerical cost are entirely competitive with sNRG exploiting full symmetries. iNRG is therefore shown to be a viable and technically simple alternative to sNRG for high-symmetry models. Moreover, iNRG can be used to solve a range of lower-symmetry multiband problems that are inaccessible to sNRG.

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arXiv2015

Thermalization and dynamics in the single impurity Anderson model

We analyze the process of thermalization, dynamics and the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) for the single impurity Anderson model, focusing on the Kondo regime. For this we construct the complete eigenbasis of the Hamiltonian using the numerical renormalization group (NRG) method in the language of the matrix product states. It is a peculiarity of the NRG that while the Wilson chain is supposed to describe a macroscopic bath, very few single particle excitations already suffice to essentially thermalize the impurity system at finite temperature, which amounts to having added a macroscopic amount of energy. Thus given an initial state of the system such as the ground state together with microscopic excitations, we calculate the spectral function of the impurity using the microcanonical and diagonal and grand canonical ensembles. By adding or removing particles at a certain Wilson energy shell on top of the ground state, we find qualitative agreement between the spectral functions calculated for different ensembles. This indicates that the system thermalizes in the long-time limit, and can be described by an appropriate statistical-mechanical ensemble. Moreover, by calculating the impurity spectral density at the Fermi level and the dot occupancy for energy eigenstates relevant for microcanonical ensemble, we find good support for ETH. The ultimate mechanism responsible for this effective thermalization within the NRG can be identified as Anderson orthogonality: the more charge that needs to flow to or from infinity after applying a local excitation within the Wilson chain, the more the system looks thermal afterwards at an increased temperature. For the same reason, however, thermalization fails if charge rearrangement after the excitation remains mostly local.

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arXiv2015

DMFT+NRG study of spin-orbital separation in a three-band Hund's metal

We show that the numerical renormalization group (NRG) is a viable multi-band impurity solver for Dynamical Mean Field Theory (DMFT), offering unprecedent real-frequency spectral resolution at arbitrarily low energies and temperatures. We use it to obtain a numerically exact DMFT solution to the Hund's metal problem for a three-orbital model with filling factor $n_d=2$. The ground state is a Fermi liquid. The one-particle spectral function has a strong particle-hole asymmetry, with a clear apparent power law for positive frequencies only. With increasing temperature it shows a coherence-incoherence crossover with spectral weight transfered from low to high energies and evolves qualitatively differently from a doped Mott insulator. The spin and orbital spectral functions show "spin-orbital separation": spin screening occurs at much lower energies than orbital screening. The renormalization group flows clearly reveal the relevant physics at all energy scales.

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arXiv2014

Transmission Phase in the Kondo Regime Revealed in a Two-Path Interferometer

We report on the direct observation of the transmission phase shift through a Kondo correlated quantum dot by employing a new type of two-path interferometer. We observed a clear $π/2$-phase shift, which persists up to the Kondo temperature $T_{\rm K}$. Above this temperature, the phase shifts by more than $π/2$ at each Coulomb peak, approaching the behavior observed for the standard Coulomb blockade regime. These observations are in remarkable agreement with 2-level numerical renormalization group calculations. The unique combination of experimental and theoretical results presented here fully elucidates the phase evolution in the Kondo regime.

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arXiv2013

Nonequilibrium dynamics in an optical transition from a neutral quantum dot to a correlated many-body state

We investigate the effect of many-body interactions on the optical absorption spectrum of a charge-tunable quantum dot coupled to a degenerate electron gas. A constructive Fano interference between an indirect path, associated with an intra dot exciton generation followed by tunneling, and a direct path, associated with the ionization of a valence-band quantum dot electron, ensures the visibility of the ensuing Fermi-edge singularity despite weak absorption strength. We find good agreement between experiment and renormalization group theory, but only when we generalize the Anderson impurity model to include a static hole and a dynamic dot-electron scattering potential. The latter highlights the fact that an optically active dot acts as a tunable quantum impurity, enabling the investigation of a new dynamic regime of Fermi-edge physics.

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arXiv2013

Proposed Rabi-Kondo Correlated State in a Laser-Driven Semiconductor Quantum Dot

Spin exchange between a single-electron charged quantum dot and itinerant electrons leads to an emergence of Kondo correlations. When the quantum dot is driven resonantly by weak laser light, the resulting emission spectrum allows for a direct probe of these correlations. In the opposite limit of vanishing exchange interaction and strong laser drive, the quantum dot exhibits coherent oscillations between the single-spin and optically excited states. Here, we show that the interplay between strong exchange and non-perturbative laser coupling leads to the formation of a new nonequilibrium quantum-correlated state, characterized by the emergence of a laser-induced secondary spin screening cloud, and examine the implications for the emission spectrum.

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arXiv2013

Iron impurities in gold and silver: Comparison of transport measurements to numerical renormalization group calculations exploiting non-Abelian symmetries

We consider iron impurities in the noble metals gold and silver and compare experimental data for the resistivity and decoherence rate to numerical renormalization group results. By exploiting non-Abelian symmetries we show improved numerical data for both quantities as compared to previous calculations [Costi et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 056802 (2009)], using the discarded weight as criterion to reliably judge the quality of convergence of the numerical data. In addition we also carry out finite-temperature calculations for the magnetoresistivity of fully screened Kondo models with S = 1/2, 1 and 3/2, and compare the results with available measurements for iron in silver, finding excellent agreement between theory and experiment for the spin-3/2 three-channel Kondo model. This lends additional support to the conclusion of Costi et al. that the latter model provides a good effective description of the Kondo physics of iron impurities in gold and silver.

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arXiv2013

Quantum Corrections to the Polarizability and Dephasing in Isolated Disordered Metals

We study the quantum corrections to the polarizability of isolated metallic mesoscopic systems using the loop-expansion in diffusive propagators. We show that the difference between connected (grand-canonical ensemble) and isolated (canonical ensemble) systems appears only in subleading terms of the expansion, and can be neglected if the frequency of the external field, $ω$, is of the order of (or even slightly smaller than) the mean level spacing, $Δ$. If $ω\ll Δ$, the two-loop correction becomes important. We calculate it by systematically evaluating the ballistic parts (the Hikami boxes) of the corresponding diagrams and exploiting electroneutrality. Our theory allows one to take into account a finite dephasing rate, $γ$, generated by electron interactions, and it is complementary to the non-perturbative results obtained from a combination of Random Matrix Theory (RMT) and the $σ$-model, valid at $γ\to 0$. Remarkably, we find that the two-loop result for isolated systems with moderately weak dephasing, $γ\sim Δ$, is similar to the result of the RMT+$σ$-model even in the limit $ω\to 0$. For smaller $γ$, we discuss the possibility to interpolate between the perturbative and the non-perturbative results. We compare our results for the temperature dependence of the polarizability of isolated rings to the experimental data of Deblock \emph{et al} [\prl \ {\bf 84}, 5379 (2000); \prb \ {\bf 65}, 075301 (2002)], and we argue that the elusive 0D regime of dephasing might have manifested itself in the observed magneto-oscillations. Besides, we thoroughly discuss possible future measurements of the polarizability, which could aim to reveal the existence of 0D dephasing and the role of the Pauli blocking at small temperatures.

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arXiv2011

Thermal noise and dephasing due to electron interactions in non-trivial geometries

We study Johnson-Nyquist noise in macroscopically inhomogeneous disordered metals and give a microscopic derivation of the correlation function of the scalar electric potentials in real space. Starting from the interacting Hamiltonian for electrons in a metal and the random phase approximation, we find a relation between the correlation function of the electric potentials and the density fluctuations which is valid for arbitrary geometry and dimensionality. We show that the potential fluctuations are proportional to the solution of the diffusion equation, taken at zero frequency. As an example, we consider networks of quasi-1D disordered wires and give an explicit expression for the correlation function in a ring attached via arms to absorbing leads. We use this result in order to develop a theory of dephasing by electronic noise in multiply-connected systems.

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arXiv2011

Universality of the Kondo effect in quantum dots with ferromagnetic leads

We investigate quantum dots in clean single-wall carbon nanotubes with ferromagnetic PdNi-leads in the Kondo regime. In most odd Coulomb valleys the Kondo resonance exhibits a pronounced splitting, which depends on the tunnel coupling to the leads and an external magnetic field $B$, and only weakly on gate voltage. Using numerical renormalization group calculations, we demonstrate that all salient features of the data can be understood using a simple model for the magnetic properties of the leads. The magnetoconductance at zero bias and low temperature depends in a universal way on $g μ_B (B-B_c) / k_B T_K$, where $T_K$ is the Kondo temperature and $B_c$ the external field compensating the splitting.

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arXiv2010

Dimensional Crossover of the Dephasing Time in Disordered Mesoscopic Rings: From Diffusive through Ergodic to 0D Behavior

We analyze dephasing by electron interactions in a small disordered quasi-one dimensional (1D) ring weakly coupled to leads, where we recently predicted a crossover for the dephasing time $\tPh(T)$ from diffusive or ergodic 1D ($\tPh^{-1} \propto T^{2/3}, T^{1}$) to $0D$ behavior ($\tPh^{-1} \propto T^{2}$) as $T$ drops below the Thouless energy $\ETh$. We provide a detailed derivation of our results, based on an influence functional for quantum Nyquist noise, and calculate all leading and subleading terms of the dephasing time in the three regimes. Explicitly taking into account the Pauli blocking of the Fermi sea in the metal allows us to describe the $0D$ regime on equal footing as the others. The crossover to $0D$, predicted by Sivan, Imry and Aronov for 3D systems, has so far eluded experimental observation. We will show that for $T \ll \ETh$, $0D$ dephasing governs not only the $T$-dependence for the smooth part of the magnetoconductivity but also for the amplitude of the Altshuler-Aronov-Spivak oscillations, which result only from electron paths winding around the ring. This observation can be exploited to filter out and eliminate contributions to dephasing from trajectories which do not wind around the ring, which may tend to mask the $T^{2}$ behavior. Thus, the ring geometry holds promise of finally observing the crossover to $0D$ experimentally.

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arXiv2009

Dimensional Crossover of the Dephasing Time in Disordered Mesoscopic Rings

We study dephasing by electron interactions in a small disordered quasi-one dimensional (1D) ring weakly coupled to leads. We use an influence functional for quantum Nyquist noise to describe the crossover for the dephasing time $\Tph (T)$ from diffusive or ergodic 1D ($ \Tph^{-1} \propto T^{2/3}, T^{1}$) to 0D behavior ($\Tph^{-1} \propto T^{2}$) as $T$ drops below the Thouless energy. The crossover to 0D, predicted earlier for 2D and 3D systems, has so far eluded experimental observation. The ring geometry holds promise of meeting this longstanding challenge, since the crossover manifests itself not only in the smooth part of the magnetoconductivity but also in the amplitude of Altshuler-Aronov-Spivak oscillations. This allows signatures of dephasing in the ring to be cleanly extracted by filtering out those of the leads.

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arXiv2009

Correlation density matrices for 1- dimensional quantum chains based on the density matrix renormalization group

A useful concept for finding numerically the dominant correlations of a given ground state in an interacting quantum lattice system in an unbiased way is the correlation density matrix. For two disjoint, separated clusters, it is defined to be the density matrix of their union minus the direct product of their individual density matrices and contains all correlations between the two clusters. We show how to extract from the correlation density matrix a general overview of the correlations as well as detailed information on the operators carrying long-range correlations and the spatial dependence of their correlation functions. To determine the correlation density matrix, we calculate the ground state for a class of spinless extended Hubbard models using the density matrix renormalization group. This numerical method is based on matrix product states for which the correlation density matrix can be obtained straightforwardly. In an appendix, we give a detailed tutorial introduction to our variational matrix product state approach for ground state calculations for 1- dimensional quantum chain models. We show in detail how matrix product states overcome the problem of large Hilbert space dimensions in these models and describe all techniques which are needed for handling them in practice.

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arXiv2009

Shedding light on non-equilibrium dynamics of a spin coupled to fermionic reservoir

A single confined spin interacting with a solid-state environment has emerged as one of the fundamental paradigms of mesoscopic physics. In contrast to standard quantum optical systems, decoherence that stems from these interactions can in general not be treated using the Born-Markov approximation at low temperatures. Here we study the non-equilibrium dynamics of a single-spin in a semiconductor quantum dot adjacent to a fermionic reservoir and show how the dynamics can be revealed in detail in an optical absorption experiment. We show that the highly asymmetrical optical absorption lineshape of the resulting Kondo exciton consists of three distinct frequency domains, corresponding to short, intermediate and long times after the initial excitation, which are in turn described by the three fixed points of the single-impurity Anderson Hamiltonian. The zero-temperature power-law singularity dominating the lineshape is linked to dynamically generated Kondo correlations in the photo-excited state. We show that this power-law singularity is tunable with gate voltage and magnetic field, and universal.

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