Non-Fermi liquid, unscreened scalar chirality and parafermions in a frustrated tetrahedron Anderson model

We investigate a four-impurity Anderson model where localized orbitals are located at vertices of a regular tetrahedron and find a novel fixed point in addition to the ordinary Fermi liquid phase. That is characterized by unscreened scalar chirality of a tetrahedron. In this phase, parafermions emerges in the excitation spectrum and quasiparticle mass diverges as 1/|T log^3 T| at low temperatures (T). The diverging effective mass is a manifestation of singular Fermi liquid states as in the underscreened Kondo problem. Between the two phases, our Monte Carlo results show the existence of a non Fermi liquid critical point where the Kondo effects and the intersite antiferromagnetic interactions are valanced. Singular behaviors are prominent in the dynamics and we find that the frequency (omega) dependence of the self-energy (Sigma) is the marginal Fermi liquid like, -Im Sigma \sim |omega|.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, published versio

High field properties of geometrically frustrated magnets

Above the saturation field, geometrically frustrated quantum antiferromagnets have dispersionless low-energy branches of excitations corresponding to localized spin-flip modes. Transition into a partially magnetized state occurs via condensation of an infinite number of degrees of freedom. The ground state below the phase transition is a magnon crystal, which breaks only translational symmetry and preserves spin-rotations about the field direction. We give a detailed review of recent works on physics of such phase transitions and present further theoretical developments. Specifically, the low-energy degrees of freedom of a spin-1/2 kagom\'e antiferromagnet are mapped to a hard hexagon gas on a triangular lattice. Such a mapping allows to obtain a quantitative description of the magnetothermodynamics of a quantum kagom\'e antiferromagnet from the exact solution for a hard hexagon gas. In particular, we find the exact critical behavior at the transition into a magnon crystal state, the universal value of the entropy at the saturation field, and the position of peaks in temperature- and field-dependence of the specific heat. Analogous mapping is presented for the sawtooth chain, which is mapped onto a model of classical hard dimers on a chain. The finite macroscopic entropies of geometrically frustrated magnets at the saturation field lead to a large magnetocaloric effect.Comment: 22 pages, proceedings of YKIS2004 worksho

Effective Hamiltonian of Three-orbital Hubbard Model on Pyrochlore Lattice: Application to LiV_2O_4

We investigate heavy fermion behaviors in the vanadium spinel LiV_2O_4. We start from a three-orbital Hubbard model on the pyrochlore lattice and derive its low-energy effective Hamiltonian by an approach of real-space renormalization group type. One important tetrahedron configuration in the rochlore lattice has a three-fold orbital degeneracy and spin S=1, and correspondingly, the effective Hamiltonian has spin and orbital exchange interactions of Kugel-Khomskii type as well as correlated electron hoppings. Analyzing the effective Hamiltonian, we find that ferromagnetic double exchange processes compete with antiferromagnetic superexchange processes and various spin and orbital exchange processes are competing to each other. These results suggest the absence of phase transition in spin and orbital spaces down to very low temperatures and their large fluctuations in the low-energy sector, which are key issues for understanding the heavy fermion behavior in LiV_2O_4.Comment: 26 pages, 26 figure

Phase transition in the one-dimensional Kondo lattice model with attractive electron-electron interaction

The one-dimensional Kondo lattice model with attractive interaction among the conduction electrons is analyzed in the case of half-filling. It is shown that there are three distinct phases depending on the coupling constants of the model. Two phases have a spin and charge gap. While one shows a clear separation of the spin and charge excitation spectrum the other phase may be characterized as a band insulator type where both excitations are due to two-particle states. The third phase is gapless in both channels and has quasi long-range order in the spin and charge density wave correlation. In this phase the spin and charge excitations have again a clearly separated spectrum. For the analysis we discuss first two limiting cases. Then a density matrix renormalization group calculation on finite systems is applied to determine the phase diagram and the correlation functions in the gapped and gapless phase for general couplding constants.Comment: 9 pages, 7 Postscript figures, REVTe

Self-similarity under inflation and level statistics: a study in two dimensions

Energy level spacing statistics are discussed for a two dimensional quasiperiodic tiling. The property of self-similarity under inflation is used to write a recursion relation for the level spacing distributions defined on square approximants to the perfect quasiperiodic structure. New distribution functions are defined and determined by a combination of numerical and analytical calculations.Comment: Latex, 13 pages including 6 EPS figures, paper submitted to PR

Spin, Charge and Quasiparticle Gaps in the One-Dimensional Kondo Lattice with f^2 Configuration

The ground state properties of the one-dimensional Kondo lattice with an f^2 configuration at each site are studied by the density matrix renormalization group method. At half-filling, competition between the Kondo exchange J and the antiferromagnetic intra f-shell exchange I leads to reduction of energy gaps for spin, quasi-particle and charge excitations. The attractive force among conduction electrons is induced by the competition and the bound state is formed. As J/I increases the f^2 singlet gives way to the Kondo singlet as the dominant local correlation. The remarkable change of the quasi-particle gap is driven by the change of the spin-1/2 excitation character from the itinerant one to the localized one. Possible metal-insulator transition is discussed which may occur as the ratio J/I is varied by reference to mean-field results in the f^2 lattice system and the two impurity Kondo system.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, submitted to J. Phys. Soc. Jp

Spin Gaps in Coupled t-J Ladders

Spin gaps in coupled $t$-$J$ ladders are investigated by exact diagonalization of small clusters up to 4$\times$8 sites. At half-filling, the numerical results for the triplet excitation spectrum are in very good agreement with a second order perturbation expansion in term of small inter-ladder and intra-ladder exchange couplings between rungs ($J/J^\prime$$<$$0.25$). The band of local triplet excitations moving coherently along the ladder (with momenta close to $\pi$) is split by the inter-ladder coupling. For intermediate couplings finite size scaling is used to estimate the spin gap. In the isotropic infinite 4-chain system (two coupled ladders) we find a spin gap of $0.245 J$, roughly half of the single ladder spin gap. When the system is hole doped, bonding and anti-bonding bound pairs of holes can propagate coherently along the chains and the spin gap remains finite.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, uuencoded form of postscript files of figures and text, LPQTH-94/

Thermodynamic properties of the one-dimensional Kondo insulators studied by the density matrix renormalization group method

Thermodynamic properties of the one-dimensional Kondo lattice model at half-filling are studied by the density matrix renormalization group method applied to the quantum transfer matrix. Spin susceptibility, charge susceptibility, and specific heat are calculated down to T=0.1t for various exchange constants. The obtained results clearly show crossover behavior from the high temperature regime of nearly independent localized spins and conduction electrons to the low temperature regime where the two degrees of freedom couple strongly. The low temperature energy scales of the charge and spin susceptibilities are determined and shown to be equal to the quasiparticle gap and the spin gap, respectively, for weak exchange couplings.Comment: 4 pages, 3 Postscript figures, REVTeX, submitted to J. Phys. Soc. Jp