Exotic Kondo effect from magnetic trimers

TL;DR

This paper investigates the exotic Kondo effect in a chromium trimer on gold, revealing a significant increase in the Kondo temperature due to orbital fluctuations and suggesting a new class of non-Fermi liquid behavior.

Contribution

It combines ab-initio and renormalization group methods to explain experimental zero-bias anomalies in Cr trimers, highlighting the role of orbital fluctuations in Kondo physics.

Findings

Large increase in Kondo temperature due to orbital fluctuations

Observation of zero-bias anomaly in Cr trimers

Proposal of a new non-Fermi liquid fixed point class

Abstract

Motivated by the recent experiments of Jamneala {\em et al.} [T. Jamnaela {\em et al.}, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 87}, 256804 (2001)], by combining {\em ab-initio} and renormalization group methods, we study the strongly correlated state of a Cr trimer deposited on gold. Internal orbital fluctuations of the trimer lead to huge increase of $T_K$ compared to the single ion Kondo temperature explaining the experimental observation of a zero-bias anomaly for the trimers. The strongly correlated state seems to belong to a new, yet hardly explored class of non--Fermi liquid fixed points.