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Register a new userKondo effect of magnetic impurities on nanotubes
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Added by
Pier Paolo Baruselli
Publication date
2012
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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The effect of magnetic impurities on the ballistic conductance of nanocontacts is, as suggested in recent work, amenable to ab initio study cite{naturemat}. Our method proceeds via a conventional density functional calculation of spin and symmetry dependent electron scattering phase shifts, followed by the subsequent numerical renormalization group solution of Anderson models -- whose ingredients and parameters are chosen so as to reproduce these phase shifts. We apply this method to investigate the Kondo zero bias anomalies that would be caused in the ballistic conductance of perfect metallic (4,4) and (8,8) single wall carbon nanotubes, ideally connected to leads at the two ends, by externally adsorbed Co and Fe adatoms. The different spin and electronic structure of these impurities are predicted to lead to a variety of Kondo temperatures, generally well below 10 K, and to interference between channels leading to Fano-like conductance minima at zero bias.
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We propose carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with magnetic impurities as a versatile platform to achieve unconventional Kondo physics, where the CNT bath is gapped by the spin-orbit interaction and surface curvature. While the strong-coupling phase is inaccessible for the special case of half-filled impurities in neutral armchair CNTs, the system in general can undergo quantum phase transitions to the Kondo ground state. The resultant position-specific phase diagrams are investigated upon variation of the CNT radius, chirality, and carrier doping, revealing several striking features, e.g., the existence of a maximal radius for nonarmchair CNTs to realize phase transitions, and an interference-induced suppression of the Kondo screening. We show that by tuning the Fermi energy via electrostatic gating, the quantum critical region can be experimentally accessed.
Transition metal impurities will yield zero bias anomalies in the conductance of well contacted metallic carbon nanotubes, but Kondo temperatures and geometry dependences have not been anticipated so far. Applying the density functional plus numerical renormalization group approach of Lucignano textit{et al.} to Co and Fe impurities in (4,4) and (8,8) nanotubes, we discover a huge difference of behaviour between outside versus inside adsorption of the impurity. The predicted Kondo temperatures and zero bias anomalies, tiny outside the nanotube, turn large and strongly radius dependent inside, owing to a change of symmetry of the magnetic orbital. Observation of this Kondo effect should open the way to a host of future experiments.
Low-temperature electronic conductance in nanocontacts, scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), and metal break junctions involving magnetic atoms or molecules is a growing area with important unsolved theoretical problems. While the detailed relationship between contact geometry and electronic structure requires a quantitative ab initio approach such as density functional theory (DFT), the Kondo many-body effects ensuing from the coupling of the impurity spin with metal electrons are most properly addressed by formulating a generalized Anderson impurity model to be solved with, for example, the numerical renormalization group (NRG) method. Since there is at present no seamless scheme that can accurately carry out that program, we have in recent years designed a systematic method for semiquantitatively joining DFT and NRG. We apply this DFT-NRG scheme to the ideal conductance of single wall (4,4) and (8,8) nanotubes with magnetic adatoms (Co and Fe), both inside and outside the nanotube, and with a single carbon atom vacancy. A rich scenario emerges, with Kondo temperatures generally in the Kelvin range, and conductance anomalies ranging from a single channel maximum to destructive Fano interference with cancellation of two channels out of the total four. The configuration yielding the highest Kondo temperature (tens of Kelvins) and a measurable zero-bias anomaly is that of a Co or Fe impurity inside the narrowest nanotube. The single atom vacancy has a spin, but a very low Kondo temperature is predicted. The geometric, electronic, and symmetry factors influencing this variability are all accessible, which makes this approach methodologically instructive and highlights many delicate and difficult points in the first-principles modeling of the Kondo effect in nanocontacts.
We show that the paradigmatic Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) description of two local magnetic moments coupled to propagating electrons breaks down in helical Luttinger Liquids when the electron interaction is stronger than some critical value. In this novel regime, the Kondo effect overwhelms the RKKY interaction over all macroscopic inter-impurity distances. This phenomenon is a direct consequence of the helicity (realized, for instance, at edges of a time-reversal invariant topological insulator) and does not take place in usual (non-helical) Luttinger Liquids.
We investigate the many-body effects of a magnetic adatom in ferromagnetic graphene by using the numerical renormalization group method. The nontrivial band dispersion of ferromagnetic graphene gives rise to interesting Kondo physics different from that in conventional ferromagnetic materials. For a half-filled impurity in undoped graphene, the presence of ferromagnetism can bring forth Kondo correlations, yielding two kink structures in the local spectral function near the Fermi energy. When the spin splitting of local occupations is compensated by an external magnetic field, the two Kondo kinks merge into a full Kondo resonance characterizing the fully screened ground state. Strikingly, we find the resulting Kondo temperature monotonically increases with the spin polarization of Dirac electrons, which violates the common sense that ferromagnetic bands are usually detrimental to Kondo correlations. Doped ferromagnetic graphene can behave as half metals, where its density of states at the Fermi energy linearly vanishes for one spin direction but keeps finite for the opposite direction. In this regime, we demonstrate an abnormal Kondo resonance that occurs in the first spin direction, while completely absent in the other one.
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