Underscreened Kondo effect in S=1 magnetic quantum dots: Exchange, anisotropy and temperature effects

TL;DR

This paper theoretically investigates how uniaxial magnetic anisotropy and exchange fields influence the underscreened Kondo effect in S=1 quantum dots, revealing conditions for restoring the effect and its universal scaling behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a combined perturbation and numerical renormalization group analysis to understand Kondo effect restoration via anisotropy tuning and magnetic field sweeping.

Findings

Effective exchange field and anisotropy are induced by ferromagnetic contacts.

Underscreened Kondo effect can be restored by tuning anisotropy or magnetic field.

Restored Kondo resonances exhibit universal S=1/2 Kondo scaling.

Abstract

We present a theoretical analysis of the effects of uniaxial magnetic anisotropy and contact-induced exchange field on the underscreened Kondo effect in S=1 magnetic quantum dots coupled to ferromagnetic leads. First, by using the second-order perturbation theory we show that the coupling to spin-polarized electrode results in an effective exchange field $B_{\rm eff}$ and an effective magnetic anisotropy $D_{\rm eff}$. Second, we confirm these findings by using the numerical renormalization group method, which is employed to study the dependence of the quantum dot spectral functions, as well as quantum dot spin, on various parameters of the system. We show that the underscreened Kondo effect is generally suppressed due to the presence of effective exchange field and can be restored by tuning the anisotropy constant, when $|D_{\rm eff}| = |B_{\rm eff}|$. The Kondo effect can also be restored by sweeping an external magnetic field, and the restoration occurs twice in a single sweep. From the distance between the restored Kondo resonances one can extract the information about both the exchange field and the effective anisotropy. Finally, we calculate the temperature dependence of linear conductance for the parameters where the Kondo effect is restored and show that the restored Kondo resonances display a universal scaling of $S=1/2$ Kondo effect.