Thermodynamics and Screening in the Ising–Kondo Model

• Published in: physica status solidi (b) Vol. 258; no. 2
• Main Authors: Bauerbach, Kevin, Mahmoud, Zakaria M. M., Gebhard, Florian
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01.02.2021
• Subjects: Fermi systems; impurity scattering; screening at finite temperatures
• ISSN: 0370-1972; 1521-3951
• DOI: 10.1002/pssb.202000367

A simplification of the symmetric single‐impurity Kondo model is introduced and studied. In the Ising–Kondo model, host electrons scatter off a single magnetic impurity at the origin whose spin orientation is dynamically conserved. This reduces the problem to potential scattering of spinless fermions that can be solved exactly using the equation‐of‐motion technique. The Ising–Kondo model provides an example for static screening. At low temperatures, the thermodynamics at finite magnetic fields resembles that of a free spin‐1/2 in a reduced external field. Alternatively, the Curie law is interpreted in terms of an antiferromagnetically screened effective spin. The spin correlations decay algebraically to zero in the ground state and display commensurate Friedel oscillations. In contrast to the symmetric Kondo model, the impurity spin is not completely screened, i.e., the screening cloud contains less than a spin‐1/2 electron. At finite temperatures and weak interactions, the spin correlations decay to zero exponentially with correlation length ξ(T) = 1/(2πT). How are magnetic impurities screened in metals? In the Ising–Kondo model, the screening cloud of the host electrons and the impurity spin do not build a Kondo singlet at low temperatures (static screening). The impurity entropy Si shows that the impurity spin remains active for all temperatures T. It requires an external magnetic field B to lift the ground‐state degeneracy.