Kondo Spin Screening Cloud in Two-dimensional Electron Gas with Spin-orbit Couplings

TL;DR

This paper investigates how spin-orbit couplings in a two-dimensional electron gas influence the Kondo screening cloud around a magnetic impurity, revealing anisotropic correlations and a crossover between different screening regimes.

Contribution

It introduces a variational wave function approach to analyze the Kondo effect in a 2D electron gas with Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit couplings, highlighting anisotropic spin correlations.

Findings

Local magnetic moment is quenched at low temperatures.

Spin-spin correlations exhibit anisotropy in space and spin.

The screening behavior interpolates between that of a conventional metal and a topological insulator surface.

Abstract

A spin-1/2 Anderson impurity in a semiconductor quantum well with Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit couplings is studied by using a variational wave function method. The local magnetic moment is found to be quenched at low temperatures. The spin-spin correlations of the impurity and the conduction electron density show anisotropy in both spatial and spin spaces, which interpolates the Kondo spin screenings of a conventional metal and of a surface of three-dimensional topological insulators.