Crossover between Fermi Liquid and non-Fermi Liquid in Orbitally Degenerate Kondo Systems

TL;DR

This paper explores the transition between Fermi-liquid and non-Fermi-liquid states in orbitally degenerate Kondo systems, revealing a new non-Fermi-liquid fixed point with unique entanglement and susceptibility properties.

Contribution

It introduces a novel non-Fermi-liquid fixed point in orbitally degenerate Kondo models and analyzes its properties using numerical renormalization-group methods.

Findings

Discovery of a new non-Fermi-liquid fixed point with fractional entropy.

Divergence of quadrupole susceptibility at zero frequency.

Fermi-liquid-like behavior of dipole susceptibility.

Abstract

Entanglement of spin and orbital Kondo effect is investigated on the basis of a Kondo-type exchange model with twofold orbital degeneracy. By using Wilson's numerical renormalization-group method, we examine dynamical and thermal properties respecting the difference in time-reversal property of multipole operators. In the presence of particle-hole symmetry, the model has a new non-Fermi-liquid fixed point with a fractional entropy. The spectral intensity of the quadrupole susceptibility diverges in the zero-frequency limit, while the dipole susceptibility shows a Fermi-liquid-like behavior. This is understood by mapping to the two-channel Kondo model, in which the dipole moment is mapped onto the operators with the scaling dimension $\Delta_m=1$, while the quadrupole moment onto the operators with another scaling dimension $\Delta_e=1/2$. Even for a fairly particle-hole asymmetric case with the Fermi-liquid ground state, the non-Fermi-liquid behavior has significant influences in electric and thermal properties.