Motivated by the global phase diagram of antiferromagnetic heavy-fermion
metals, we study the Kondo effect from the perspective of a nonlinear sigma
model in the one dimensional Kondo-Heisenberg model. We focus on the effects of
the instanton configurations of the sigma-model field and the associated Berry
phase. Guided by the results derived using bosonization methods, we demonstrate
that the Kondo singlet formation is accompanied by an emergent Berry phase.
This Berry phase also captures the competition between the Kondo-singlet
formation and spin Peierls correlations. Related effects are likely to be
realized in Kondo lattice systems in higher dimensions.Comment: 7 pages; replaced with the version published in PR