Enhancement of the Kondo temperature of magnetic impurities in metallic point contacts due to the fluctuations of the local density of states

The effect of local density of states (LDOS) fluctuations on the dynamics of a Kondo impurities in a small metallic point contact (PC) is studied. To estimate the spatial and energy dependent LDOS fluctuations we investigate a model PC by means of a transfer matrix formalism. For small PC's in the nanometer scale we find that near to the orifice strong LDOS fluctuations develop. These fluctuations may shift the Kondo temperature by several orders of magnitude, and result in a strong broadening of the PC Kondo peak in agreement with the results of recent measurements.Comment: 11 pages, uuencoded gz-compressed tar-files, latex, figures in a PostScript fil

Theory of Manganese-Manganese interaction in GaMnAs

We investigate the interaction of two Mn ions in the dilute magnetic semiconductor GaMnAs using the variational envelope wave function approach within the framework of six band model of the valence band. We find that the effective interaction between the Mn core spins at a typical separation d is strongly anisotropic for active Mn concentrations less than x = 1.3%, but it is almost isotropic for shorter distances (d < 13A). As a result, in unannealed and strongly compensated samples strong frustration effects must be present. We also verify that an effective Hamiltonian description can be used in the dilute limit, x < 1.3%, and extract the parameters of this effective Hamiltonian.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure

Perturbative theory of the non-equilibrium singlet-triplet transition

We study equilibrium and non-equilibrium properties of a two-level quantum dot close to the singlet-triplet transition. We treat the on-site Coulomb interaction and Hund's rule coupling perturbatively within the Keldysh formalism. We compute the spectral functions and the differential conductance of the dot. For moderate interactions our perturbative approach captures the Kondo effect and many of the experimentally observed properties.Comment: Contribution to the proceedings of ICM2009 (International Conference on Magnetism

Dissipative quantum phase transition in a quantum dot

We study the transport properties of a quantum dot (QD) with highly resistive gate electrodes, and show that the QD displays a quantum phase transition analogous to the famous dissipative phase transition first identified by S. Chakravarty [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 49}, 681 (1982)]; for a review see [A. J. Leggett {\em et al.}, Rev. Mod. Phys. {\bf 59}, 1 (1987)]. At temperature T=0, the charge on the central island of a conventional QD changes smoothly as a function of gate voltage, due to quantum fluctuations. However, for sufficiently large gate resistance charge fluctuations on the island can freeze out even at the degeneracy point, causing the charge on the island to change in sharp steps as a function of gate voltage. For $R_g<R_C$ the steps remain smeared out by quantum fluctuations. The Coulomb blockade peaks in conductance display anomalous scaling at intermediate temperatures, and at very low temperatures a sharp step develops in the QD conductance.Comment: 4+ pages, 3 figure

Theory of optical conductivity for dilute GaMnAs

We construct a semi-microscopic theory, to describe the optical conductivity of GaMnAs in the dilute limit, x = 1%. We construct an effective Hamiltonian that captures inside-impurity band optical transitions as well as transitions between the valence band and the impurity band. All parameters of the Hamiltonian are computed from microscopic variational calculations. We find a metal-insulator transition within the impurity band in the concentration range, x = 0.2 -0.3 for uncompensated and x = 1-3% for compensated samples, in good agreement with the experiments. We find an optical mass m_opt = m_e, which is almost independent of the impurity concentration excepting in the vicinity of the metal-insulator transition, where it reaches values as large as m_opt = 10 m_e. We also reproduce a mid-infrared peak at \hbar \omega = 200 meV, which redshifts upon doping, in quantitative agreement with the experiments.Comment: 17 pages, 16 figures, submitted to Physical Review

Theory of frequency-dependent spin current noise through correlated quantum dots

We analyze the equilibrium and non-equilibrium frequency-dependent spin current noise and spin conductance through a quantum dot in the local moment regime. Spin current correlations are shown to behave markedly differently from charge correlations: Equilibrium spin cross-correlations are suppressed at frequencies below the Kondo scale, and are characterized by a universal function that we determine numerically for zero temperature. For asymmetrical quantum dots dynamical spin accumulation resonance is found for frequencies of the order of the Kondo energy. At higher temperatures surprising low-frequency anomalies related to overall spin conservation appear

Comment on ``Point-Contact Study of Fast and Slow Two-Level Fluctuators in Metallic Glasses'' by Keijsers, Shklyarevskii and van Kempen

We point out that a recent experiment by Keijsers, Shklyarevskii and van Kempen [Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 3411 (1996)] on metallic glass point contacts containing two-level systems (TLS) effectively measures for the first time the conductance contributions of individual TLSs (previous experiments averaged over a distribution of TLSs). For this case the predictions of the Kozub-Kulik theory for the TLS-electron interaction differ from those of the Vladar-Zawadowski theory, the latter giving much better agreement with experiment.Comment: 1 page Revtex, 1 figure, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Non-equilibrium time evolution and rephasing in the quantum sine-Gordon model

We discuss the non-equilibrium time evolution of the phase field in the sine-Gordon model using two very different approaches: the truncated Wigner approximation and the truncated conformal space approach. We demonstrate that the two approaches agree for a period covering the first few oscillations, thereby giving a solid theoretical prediction in the framework of sine-Gordon model, which is thought to describe the dynamics of two bosonic condensates in quasi-one-dimensional traps coupled via a Josephson tunneling term. We conclude, however, that the recently observed phase-locking behavior cannot be explained in terms of homogeneous sine-Gordon dynamics, which hints at the role of other degrees of freedom or inhomogeneity in the experimental system.Comment: 34 pages, 9 figure

Theory of inelastic scattering from magnetic impurities

We use the numerical renormalization group method tocalculate the single particle matrix elements $\cal T$ of the many body $T$-matrix of the conduction electrons scattered by a magnetic impurity at T=0 temperature. Since $\cal T$ determines both the total and the elastic, spin-diagonal scattering cross sections, we are able to compute the full energy-, spin- and magnetic field dependence of the inelastic scattering cross section, $\sigma_{\rm inel}(\omega)$. We find an almost linear frequency dependence of $\sigma_{\rm inel}(\omega)$ below the Kondo temperature, $T_K$, which crosses over to a $\sim \omega^2$ behavior only at extremely low energies. Our method can be generalized to other quantum impurity models.Comment: 4 page

Non-equilibrium frequency-dependent noise through a quantum dot: A real time functional renormalization group approach

We construct a real time current-conserving functional renormalization group (RG) scheme on the Keldysh contour to study frequency-dependent transport and noise through a quantum dot in the local moment regime. We find that the current vertex develops a non-trivial non-local structure in time, governed by a new set of RG equations. Solving these RG equations, we compute the complete frequency and temperature-dependence of the noise spectrum. For voltages large compared to the Kondo temperature, $eV \gg k_BT_K$, two sharp anti-resonances are found in the noise spectrum at frequencies $\hbar \omega = \pm e V$, and correspondingly, two peaks in the ac conductance through the dot.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure