Kondo effect and conductance of nanocontacts with magnetic impurities

TL;DR

This paper investigates how dynamical correlations influence the electronic structure and conductance of copper nanocontacts with magnetic impurities, revealing the emergence of the Kondo effect and Fano resonances in transport properties.

Contribution

It combines density functional theory with dynamical impurity modeling to accurately capture the Kondo effect in nanocontacts with magnetic impurities.

Findings

Dynamical correlations induce the Kondo effect in nanocontacts.

Fano features appear in conductance due to the Kondo resonance.

Results align with experimental observations of conductance anomalies.

Abstract

We study the impact of dynamical correlations on the electronic structure and coherent transport properties of Cu nanocontacts hosting a single magnetic impurity (Ni,Co,Fe) in the contact region. The strong dynamical correlations of the impurity 3d-electrons are fully taken into account by combining density functional calculations with a dynamical treatment of the impurity 3d-shell in the one-crossing approximation. We find that dynamical correlations give rise to the Kondo effect and lead to Fano features in the coherent transport characteristics similar to those observed in related experiments.