No Arabic abstract
The interplay between the Kondo effect and magnetic ordering driven by the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida interaction is studied within the two-dimensional Hubbard-Kondo lattice model. In addition to the antiferromagnetic exchange interaction, $J_perp$, between the localized and the conduction electrons, this model also contains the local repulsion, $U$, between the conduction electrons. We use variational cluster approximation to investigate the competition between the antiferromagnetic phase, the Kondo singlet phase, and a ferrimagnetic phase on square lattice. At half-filling, the Neel antiferromagnetic phase dominates from small to moderate $J_perp$ and $UJ_perp$, and the Kondo singlet elsewhere. Sufficiently away from half-filling, the antiferromagnetic phase first gives way to a ferrimagnetic phase (in which the localized spins order ferromagnetically, and the conduction electrons do likewise, but the two mutually align antiferromagnetically), and then to the Kondo singlet phase.
We employ the cluster slave-spin method to investigate systematically the ground state properties of the Hubbard model on a square lattice with doping $delta$ and coupling strength $U$ being its parameters. In addition to a crossover reflected in the behavior of the antiferromagnetic gap $Delta_{text{AFM}}$, this property can also be observed in the energetics of the cluster slave-spin Hamiltonian -- the antiferromagnetism at small $U$ is due to the potential energy gain while that in the strong coupling limit is driven by the kinetic energy gain, which is consistent with the results from the cluster dynamical mean-field theory calculation and the quantum Monte Carlo simulation. We find the interaction $U_{c}$ for the crossover in the AFM state, separating the weak- and strong- coupling regimes, almost remains unchanged upon doping, and it is smaller than the critical coupling strength $U_{text{Mott}}$ for the first-order metal-insulator Mott transition in the half-filled paramagnetic state. At half-filling, a relationship between the staggered magnetization $M$ and $Delta_{text{AFM}}$ is established in the small $U$ limit to nullify the Hartree-Fock theory, and a first-order Mott transition in the paramagnetic state is substantiated, which is characterized by discontinuities and hystereses at $U_{text{Mott}}=10t$. Finally, an overall phase diagram in the $U$-$delta$ plane is presented, which is composed of four regimes: the antiferromagnetic insulator, the antiferromagnetic metal with the compressibility $kappa>0$ or $kappa<0$, and the paramagnetic metal, as well as three phase transitions: (i) From the antiferromagnetic metal to the paramagnetic metal, (ii) between the antiferromagnetic metal phases with positive and negative $kappa$, and (iii) separating the antiferromagnetic insulating phase from the antiferromagnetic metal phase.
The magnetic ground state phase diagram of the ferromagnetic Kondo-lattice model is constructed by calculating internal energies of all possible bipartite magnetic configurations of the simple cubic lattice explicitly. This is done in one dimension (1D), 2D and 3D for a local moment of S = 3/2. By assuming saturation in the local moment system we are able to treat all appearing higher local correlation functions within an equation of motion approach exactly. A simple explanation for the obtained phase diagram in terms of bandwidth reduction is given. Regions of phase separation are determined from the internal energy curves by an explicit Maxwell construction.
We study the half-filled Hubbard model on the triangular lattice with spin-dependent Kitaev-like hopping. Using the variational cluster approach, we identify five phases: a metallic phase, a non-coplanar chiral magnetic order, a $120^circ$ magnetic order, a nonmagnetic insulator (NMI), and an interacting Chern insulator (CI) with a nonzero Chern number. The transition from CI to NMI is characterized by the change of the charge gap from an indirect band gap to a direct Mott gap. Based on the slave-rotor mean-field theory, the NMI phase is further suggested to be a gapless Mott insulator with a spinon Fermi surface or a fractionalized CI with nontrivial spinon topology, depending on the strength of Kitaev-like hopping. Our work highlights the rising field that interesting phases emerge from the interplay of band topology and Mott physics.
In heavy-fermion systems, the competition between the local Kondo physics and intersite magnetic fluctuations results in unconventional quantum critical phenomena which are frequently addressed within the Kondo lattice model (KLM). Here we study this interplay in the SU($N$) symmetric generalization of the two-dimensional half-filled KLM by quantum Monte Carlo simulations with $N$ up to 8. While the long-range antiferromagnetic (AF) order in SU($N$) quantum spin systems typically gives way to spin-singlet ground states with spontaneously broken lattice symmetry, we find that the SU($N$) KLM is unique in that for each finite $N$ its ground-state phase diagram hosts only two phases -- AF order and the Kondo-screened phase. The absence of any intermediate phase between the $N=2$ and large-$N$ cases establishes adiabatic correspondence between both limits and confirms that the large-$N$ theory is a correct saddle point of the KLM fermionic path integral and a good starting point to include quantum fluctuations. In addition, we determine the evolution of the single-particle gap, quasiparticle residue of the doped hole at momentum $(pi,pi)$, and spin gap across the magnetic order-disorder transition. Our results indicate that increasing $N$ modifies the behavior of the coherence temperature: while it evolves smoothly across the magnetic transition at $N=2$ it develops an abrupt jump -- of up to an order of magnitude -- at larger but finite $N$. We discuss the magnetic order-disorder transition from a quantum-field-theoretic perspective and comment on implications of our findings for the interpretation of experiments on quantum critical heavy-fermion compounds.
We study a spin-ice Kondo lattice model on a breathing pyrochlore lattice with classical localized spins. The highly efficient kernel polynomial expansion method, together with a classical Monte Carlo method, is employed in order to study the magnetic phase diagram at four representative values of the number density of itinerant electrons. We tune the breathing mode by varying the hopping ratio -- the ratio of hopping parameters for itinerant electrons along inequivalent paths. Several interesting magnetic phases are stabilized in the phase diagram parameterized by the hopping ratio, Kondo coupling, and electronic filling fraction, including an all-in/all-out ordered spin configuration phase, spin-ice, ordered phases containing $16$ and $32$ spin sites in the magnetic unit cell, as well as a disordered phase at small values of the hopping ratio.