The Aubry-Andre Anderson model: Magnetic impurities coupled to a fractal spectrum

TL;DR

This study investigates the behavior of magnetic impurities in a fractal spectrum using the Aubry-Andre model, revealing unique fractal fixed points and oscillatory thermodynamic properties at criticality.

Contribution

It introduces a combined NRG and KPM approach to analyze the AAA model, uncovering fractal fixed points and novel impurity thermodynamics at the critical spectrum.

Findings

Impurity properties oscillate with log temperature below Kondo scale.

Kondo temperature exhibits power-law dependence on exchange coupling.

Impurity thermodynamics become negative and oscillatory at criticality.

Abstract

The Anderson model for a magnetic impurity in a one-dimensional quasicrystal is studied using the numerical renormalization group (NRG). The main focus is elucidating the physics at the critical point of the Aubry-Andre (AA) Hamiltonian, which exhibits a fractal spectrum with multifractal wave functions, leading to an AA Anderson (AAA) impurity model with an energy-dependent hybridization function defined through the multifractal local density of states at the impurity site. We first study a class of Anderson impurity models with uniform fractal hybridization functions that the NRG can solve to arbitrarily low temperatures. Below a Kondo scale $T_K$, these models approach a fractal strong-coupling fixed point where impurity thermodynamic properties oscillate with $\log_b T$ about negative average values determined by the fractal dimension of the spectrum. The fractal dimension also enters into a power-law dependence of $T_K$ on the Kondo exchange coupling $J_K$. To treat the AAA model, we combine the NRG with the kernel polynomial method (KPM) to form an efficient approach that can treat hosts without translational symmetry down to a temperature scale set by the KPM expansion order. The aforementioned fractal strong-coupling fixed point is reached by the critical AAA model in a simplified treatment that neglects the wave-function contribution to the hybridization. The temperature-averaged properties are those expected for the numerically determined fractal dimension of $0.5$. At the AA critical point, impurity thermodynamic properties become negative and oscillatory. Under sample-averaging, the mean and median Kondo temperatures exhibit power-law dependences on $J_K$ with exponents characteristic of different fractal dimensions. We attribute these signatures to the impurity probing a distribution of fractal strong-coupling fixed points with decreasing temperature.