No Arabic abstract
We study finite-temperature properties of the Kondo effect in a carbon nanotube (CNT) quantum dot using the Wilson numerical renormalization group (NRG). In the absence of magnetic fields, four degenerate energy levels of the CNT consisting of spin and orbital degrees of freedom give rise to the SU(4) Kondo effect. We revisit the universal scaling behavior of the SU(4) conductance for quarter- and half-filling in a wide temperature range. We find that the filling dependence of the universal scaling behavior at low temperatures $T$ can be explained clearly with an extended Fermi-liquid theory. This theory clarifies that a $T^{2}$ coefficient of conductance becomes zero at quarter-filling whereas the coefficient at half-filling is finite. We also study a field-induced crossover from the SU(4) to SU(2) Kondo state observed at the half-filled CNT dot. The crossover is caused by the matching of the spin and orbital Zeeman splittings, which lock two levels among the four at the Fermi level even in magnetic fields $B$. We find that the conductance shows the SU($4$) scaling behavior at $mu_{B}B<k_{B}T_{K}^{mathrm{SU(4)}}$ and it exhibits the SU($2$) universality at $mu_{B}Bgg k_{B}T_{K}^{mathrm{SU(4)}}$, where $T_{K}^{mathrm{SU(4)}}$ is the SU($4$) Kondo temperature. To clarify how the excited states evolve along the SU(4) to SU(2) crossover, we also calculate the spectral function. The results show that the Kondo resonance width of the two states locked at the Fermi level becomes sharper with increasing fields. The spectral peaks of the other two levels moving away from the Fermi level merge with atomic limit peaks for $mu_{B}B gtrsim k_{B}T_{K}^{mathrm{SU(4)}}$.
We theoretically study an emergent SU(2) symmetry which is suggested by recent magneto-transport measurements, carried out near two electrons filling of a carbon nanotube quantum dot. It emerges in the case where the spin and orbital Zeeman splittings cancel each other out for two of the one-particle dot levels among four. Using the Wilson numerical renormalization group, we show that a crossover from the SU(4) to SU(2) Fermi-liquid behavior occurs at two impurity-electrons filling as magnetic field increases. We also find that the quasiparticles are significantly renormalized as the remaining two one-particle levels move away from the Fermi level and are frozen at high magnetic fields. In order to clarify how the ground state evolves during such a crossover, we also reexamine the SU(N) Kondo singlet state for M impurity-electrons filling in the limit of strong exchange interactions. We show that the nondegenerate Fermi-liquid fixed point of Nozi`{e}es and Blandin can be described as a bosonic Perron-Frobenius vector for M hard-core bosons, each of which consists of one impurity-electron and one conduction hole. This interpretation can also be applied to the Fermi-liquid fixed-point without the SU(N) symmetry.
The sensitivity of shot noise to the interplay between Kondo correlations and superconductivity is investigated in a carbon nanotube quantum dot connected to superconducting electrodes. Depending on the gate voltage, the SU(2) and SU(4) Kondo unitary regimes can be clearly identified. We observe enhancement of the shot noise via the Fano factor in the superconducting state. Its divergence at low bias voltage, which is more pronounced in the SU(4) regime than in the SU(2) one, is larger than what is expected from proliferation of multiple Andreev reflections predicted by the existing theories. Our result suggests that Kondo effect is responsible for this strong enhancement.
Understanding the interplay between many-body phenomena and non-equilibrium in systems with entangled spin and orbital degrees of freedom is a central objective in nano-electronics. We demonstrate that the combination of Coulomb interaction, spin-orbit coupling and valley mixing results in a particular selection of the inelastic virtual processes contributing to the Kondo resonance in carbon nanotubes at low temperatures. This effect is dictated by conjugation properties of the underlying carbon nanotube spectrum at zero and finite magnetic field. Our measurements on a clean carbon nanotube are complemented by calculations based on a new approach to the non-equilibrium Kondo problem which well reproduces the rich experimental observations in Kondo transport.
Semiconductor nano-devices have been scaled to the level that transport can be dominated by a single dopant atom. In the strong coupling case a Kondo effect is observed when one electron is bound to the atom. Here, we report on the spin as well as orbital Kondo ground state. We experimentally as well than theoretically show how we can tune a symmetry transition from a SU(4) ground state, a many body state that forms a spin as well as orbital singlet by virtual exchange with the leads, to a pure SU(2) orbital ground state, as a function of magnetic field. The small size and the s-like orbital symmetry of the ground state of the dopant, make it a model system in which the magnetic field only couples to the spin degree of freedom and allows for observation of this SU(4) to SU(2) transition.
We analyze, from a quantum information theory perspective, the possibility of realizing a SU(4) entangled Kondo regime in semiconductor double quantum dot devices. We focus our analysis on the ground state properties and consider the general experimental situation where the coupling parameters of the two quantum dots differ. We model each quantum dot with an Anderson type Hamiltonian including an interdot Coulomb repulsion and tunnel couplings for each quantum dot to independent fermionic baths. We find that the spin and pseudospin entanglements can be made equal, and the SU(4) symmetry recovered, if the gate voltages are chosen in such a way that the average charge occupancies of the two quantum dots are equal, and the double occupancy on the double quantum dot is suppressed. We present density matrix renormalization group numerical results for the spin and pseudospin entanglement entropies, and analytical results for a simplified model that captures the main physics of the problem.