Spin and thermal current scaling at a $Y$-junction of XX spin chains

TL;DR

This paper investigates the boundary phase diagram and low-temperature transport properties of a Y-junction of XX spin chains, revealing different regimes and spin fractionalization phenomena influenced by anisotropy.

Contribution

It identifies the strong-coupling regimes and analyzes the effects of anisotropy on the Kondo fixed points using boundary conformal field theory.

Findings

Two distinct low-temperature regimes analogous to Kondo fixed points

Evidence of spin fractionalization at the four-channel Kondo fixed point

Instability of the four-channel fixed point under XY anisotropy

Abstract

We study the boundary phase diagram and the low-temperature heat and magnetization transport at a $Y$-junction of XX spin chains. Depending on the magnetization axis anisotropy between the magnetic exchange interactions at the junction, the system exhibits two different strong-coupling regimes at low energies/temperatures, similar to the overscreened (topological) four- and to the two-channel Kondo fixed points. Using renormalization group arguments combined with boundary conformal field theory methods, we show the instability of the former under any XY-type anisotropy at the junction. We analyze the low-temperature spin and the heat conductances. We find evidence of spin fractionalization of the elementary excitations at the four-channel Kondo fixed point by means of the magnetic Wiedemann-Franz law. We caution that the instability under XY anisotropy may hinder the detection of the phenomenology related to the four-channel Kondo effect, therefore requiring careful control in experimental realizations.