Competition Between Kondo Screening and Magnetism at the LaAlO$_3$/SrTiO$_3$ Interface

TL;DR

This paper develops a theoretical model explaining the magnetic and transport phenomena at LaAlO₃/SrTiO₃ interfaces, highlighting the competition between Kondo screening and magnetic interactions driven by electron density changes.

Contribution

It introduces a model capturing the interplay between conduction band filling and local magnetic moments, explaining experimental magnetic and transport behaviors at the interface.

Findings

Kondo scale increases with electron density at low densities.

Above a critical density, ferromagnetic interactions emerge, reducing the Kondo scale.

Experimental data links anomalous Hall effect to low magnetic moment concentration.

Abstract

We present a theory of magnetic and magneto-transport phenomena at LaAlO$_3$/SrTiO$_3$ interfaces, which as a central ingredient includes coupling between the conduction bands and local magnetic moments originating from charge traps at the interface. Tuning the itinerant electron density in the model drives transitions between a heavy Fermi liquid phase with screened moments and various magnetic states. The dependence of the magnetic phenomena on the electron density or gate voltage stems from competing magnetic interactions between the local moments and the different conduction bands. At low densities only the lowest conduction band, composed of the $d_{xy}$ orbitals of Ti, is occupied. Its antiferromagnetic interaction with the local moments leads to screening of the moments at a Kondo scale that increases with density. However, above a critical density, measured in experiments to be $n_c\approx 1.7\times 10^{13} cm^{-2}$, the $d_{xz}$ and $d_{yz}$ bands begin to populate. Their ferromagnetic interaction with the local moments competes with the antiferromagnetic interaction of the $d_{xy}$ band leading to eventual reduction of the Kondo scale with density. We explain the distinct magneto transport regimes seen in experiments as manifestations of the magnetic phase diagram computed from the model. We present new data showing a relation between the anomalous Hall effect and the resistivity in the system. The data strongly suggests that the concentration of local magnetic moments affecting the transport in the system is much lower than the carrier density, in accord with the theoretical model.