Interfacial proximity and interplay between Kondo and short-range magnetic correlations in heterostructures

TL;DR

This paper explores how interlayer distance affects the interplay between Kondo effects and short-range magnetic correlations in a three-layer heterostructure, revealing complex phase transitions and diverse magnetic phases.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed theoretical model of a heterostructure with coupled layers, analyzing how interlayer couplings influence magnetic and Kondo phenomena, which is a novel approach.

Findings

Interlayer coupling variations induce electronic dynamics at the interface.

Phase diagrams show discontinuous and continuous transitions with temperature and interlayer hopping.

Rich magnetic phases including Kondo, ferromagnetic, and antiferromagnetic states are identified.

Abstract

In this work, we investigate the influence of interlayer distance in a heterostructure containing both Kondo effects and short-range magnetic correlations. Our proposed heterostructure comprises three coupled square lattice layers. The first layer is governed by the Kondo-Heisenberg lattice model involving $f$- and $d$-electrons, which interact via Kondo and Heisenberg couplings, $J_{K}$ and $J_{H}$, respectively. The other two layers consist of non-interacting itinerant electrons, where coupling with the first layer is determined by two perpendicular hopping parameters. We find that varying the interlayer couplings induces electronic dynamics at the interface, altering the behavior of mean-field parameters describing the Kondo effect and short-range magnetic correlations. The system's temperature - interlayer hopping parameter phase diagram exhibits a sequence of discontinuous and continuous transitions. In the cases, $|J_{K}|<|J_{H}|$ and $|J_{K}|>|J_{H}|$ rich phase diagrams are found which include Kondo, ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic correlations. Our work provides insights into hosting Kondo correlations in heterostructures.