Natural Orbitals Renormalization Group Approach to the Two-Impurity Kondo Critical Point

TL;DR

This paper uses a new natural orbitals renormalization group method to identify a quantum critical point in the two-impurity Kondo model, resolving long-standing debates and linking it to a hidden particle-hole symmetry.

Contribution

It introduces an unbiased approach to study the two-impurity Kondo problem, confirming the existence of a quantum critical point and clarifying previous conflicting results.

Findings

Existence of a quantum critical point on the antiferromagnetic side for even impurity spacing

Power-law divergence of impurity staggered susceptibility with critical exponent 0.60(1)

Resolution of discrepancies between earlier numerical studies

Abstract

The problem of two magnetic impurities in a normal metal exposes the two opposite tendencies in the formation of a singlet ground state, driven respectively by the single-ion Kondo effect with conduction electrons to screen impurity spins or the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida interaction between the two impurities to directly form impurity spin singlet. However, whether the competition between these two tendencies can lead to a quantum critical point has been debated over more than two decades. Here, we study this problem by applying the newly proposed natural orbitals renormalization group method to a lattice version of the two-impurity Kondo model with a direct exchange $K$ between the two impurity spins. The method allows for unbiased accessing the ground state wave functions and low-lying excitations for sufficiently large system sizes. We demonstrate the existence of a quantum critical point, characterized by the power-law divergence of impurity staggered susceptibility with critical exponent $\gamma = 0.60(1)$, on the antiferromagnetic side of $K$ when the interimpurity distance $R$ is even lattice spacing, while a crossover behavior is recovered when $R$ is odd lattice spacing. These results have ultimately resolved the long-standing discrepancy between the numerical renormalization group and quantum Monte Carlo studies, confirming a link of this two-impurity Kondo critical point to a hidden particle-hole symmetry predicted by the local Fermi liquid theory.