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Phase diagram of a pseudogap Anderson model with application to graphene

Hung T. Dang Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering, Phenikaa University, Yen Nghia, Ha Dong district, Hanoi, Vietnam Phenikaa Institute for Advanced Study, Phenikaa University, Yen Nghia, Ha Dong district, Hanoi, Vietnam    Hoa T.M. Nghiem Phenikaa Institute for Advanced Study, Phenikaa University, Yen Nghia, Ha Dong district, Hanoi, Vietnam
Abstract

The Anderson model of an ss-wave single-orbital correlated impurity placed on a noninteracting honeycomb lattice, a simplified model for studying an impurity on graphene, is used to investigate pseudogap Kondo problem. In this model, there are two quantum phases: the phase of free impurity local moment and the Kondo phase where this local moment is fully screened. The transition between these two phases is under investigation. The work focuses mostly on the case where the impurity is placed on top of a lattice site. In this case, the full phase diagram is constructed using three parameters: the Hubbard interaction UU, the hybridization strength v0v_{0} and the impurity energy level ϵd\epsilon_{d}. The phase diagram exhibits linear (Uc,ϵdc)(U^{c},\epsilon_{d}^{c}) phase boundary, the slope of which, as well as the critical value ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c}, depends strongly on v02v_{0}^{2}. Further analysis shows that the real part of the self energy at zero frequency and the impurity occupancy can help to understand the behaviors of the phase boundaries. The dependence of the phase transition on the impurity position is briefly discussed, revealing difficulties that one needs to solve in order to realize the pseudogap Kondo model in the realistic graphene lattice.

I Introduction

The Kondo effect, a correlation effect where the spin of an impurity is completely screened by conduction electrons of the host material at low temperature, is one of the most fundamental problems in the field of strongly correlated systems Hewson (1997). Since the theoretical work of Kondo studying the anomalous resistivity of metallic systems doped with magnetic impurities Kondo (1964) in the 1960s, the Kondo model has revealed interesting universal behaviors at temperatures below a Kondo energy scale TKT_{K} related to the suppression of the impurity local moment Wilson (1975). The Kondo model and the more general Anderson model Anderson (1961) are considered as the most basic models to study many-body physics, which is rather well-understood especially with the invention of the numerical renormalization group (NRG) method in 1970s Wilson (1975); Bulla et al. (2008). The Kondo physics plays an important role in understanding more complicated strongly correlated problems such as the Kondo lattice model for heavy-fermion systems Doniach (1977); Löhneysen et al. (2007); Gegenwart et al. (2008), lattice correlated systems such as the Hubbard model or multi-orbital systems Georges and Kotliar (1992); Georges et al. (1996, 2013). From the methodology point of view, solving the correlated impurity problem allows scientists to further develop more powerful methods for correlated lattice systems, in particular the dynamical mean-field theory Georges et al. (1996); Gull et al. (2011).

Since 1990s, the topic of Kondo problems has been “revived” Kouwenhoven and Glazman (2001) thanks to new experimental realizations of Kondo systems in quantum dots Goldhaber-Gordon et al. (1998); Sasaki et al. (2000) and by controlling magnetic adatoms on metallic surfaces using scanning tunneling microscopy Crommie et al. (1993a, b); Li et al. (1998); Manoharan et al. (2000). Moreover, there are corners in the field of Kondo problems that are not thoroughly investigated and are still challenging to solve theoretically or to measure experimentally. One of them is the class of impurity problems where the host materials are semimetals, of which the low-energy density of states (DOS) vanishes at the Fermi level as a power law of frequency ν(ω)|ω|r\nu(\omega)\sim|\omega|^{r}. It is called the “pseudogap” Kondo problem Withoff and Fradkin (1990); Gonzalez-Buxton and Ingersent (1998). The vanishing point at the Fermi level of the DOS of the host material may prevent the Kondo screening effect to occur even at nonzero coupling constant, thus there exists a quantum phase transition from the free local moment phase to the Kondo phase, where this local moment is fully screend, by varying the coupling constant or by increasing valence mixing Withoff and Fradkin (1990); Pixley et al. (2012). This is different from the conventional Kondo system (the DOS of the host is nonzero at the Fermi level), where the state of the free local moment only appears when the Kondo coupling vanishes. Previous works Withoff and Fradkin (1990); Bulla et al. (1997); Gonzalez-Buxton and Ingersent (1998) have shown that different quantum phases occur depending on the value of rr, which is divided into three regions: small rr (0<r<r0<r<r^{*}), intermediate rr (r<r<rmaxr^{*}<r<r_{max}) and large rr (r>rmaxr>r_{max}) with r0.375r^{*}\approx 0.375 and rmax=12r_{max}=\frac{1}{2}. Small- and intermediate-rr regions are distinguished from the large-rr one by the quantum critical point (QCP) at the particle-hole symmetric point, which is absent in the latter case. The intermediate-rr region is differentiated from the small-rr region by an additional asymmetric fixed point when the particle-hole symmetry is broken Gonzalez-Buxton and Ingersent (1998). In this region, r=1r=1 is the case of interest. Cassanello and Fradkin Cassanello and Fradkin (1996) has shown that, at r=1r=1, there are logarithmic corrections included in the scaling laws of many kinds of physical observables, suggesting that the physics at r=1r=1 be analogous to a system at an upper critical dimension at criticality. Further study Vojta and Fritz (2004); Fritz and Vojta (2004) provides more evidence for the characteristics of upper critical dimension at r=1r=1 such as the nature of the phase transition is changed when crossing r=1r=1 and perturbative approach can be feasible at r>1r>1.

In the experimental aspect, the pseudogap Kondo model has been used to interpret reasonably a new type of QCPs that occurs in heavy fermion systems Si et al. (2001); Gegenwart et al. (2008); Pixley et al. (2012) or to study impurity local moment in unconventional superconductors Vojta and Bulla (2001). However, the difficulty in realizing the model in experiments is the main issue that hinders the progress of research in this topic. Indeed there are not many materials with power-law DOS around the Fermi level, a few candidates are dd-wave superconductors and graphene which are related to the case r=1r=1. Studying impurities in dd-wave superconductors is nontrivial because directly measuring properties at the impurity in the bulk system is not simple. Graphene on the other hand might be more prospective experimentally as it is a 2D material, allowing for surface measurement techniques such as scanning tunneling microscopy. Not so long after its discovery Novoselov et al. (2004), graphene has been used as the host material for magnetic adatoms, typically the cobalt adatoms Mattos (2009); Jacob et al. (2009); Brar et al. (2011); Wang et al. (2012). Much effort is devoted to the determination of the stable position of an adatom on graphene and the dependence of its magnetic state on each position Wehling et al. (2010a, b); Eelbo et al. (2013); Virgus et al. (2014). Furthermore, for most of the cases, graphene is deposited on a substrate, the substrate is thus another factor that strongly affects the magnetic behavior of the adatom on graphene Ren et al. (2014); Donati et al. (2014). The readers may also refer to Ref. Fritz and Vojta (2013) for a review of theories and experiments for the problem of an impurity on graphene lattice.

This paper is devoted to the understanding of the pseudogap Kondo problem where the host metal, a honeycomb lattice, simulating the low-energy physics of graphene, and the adatom is restricted to an ss-wave single-orbital impurity. From our high-temperature simulation data generated by continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo method Gull et al. (2011), we employ Binder analysis Binder (1981); Pixley et al. (2012) to determine the phase transition at zero temperature and study physical properties as the temperature decreases. We focus mostly on the case of an impurity placed on top of a lattice site. First we build a full phase diagram for the r=1r=1 pseudogap Anderson model, in which the Kondo screening phase can only be observed in a mixed-valent state by driving the impurity away from half-filling. We then discuss briefly the situations where the impurity is placed at different location on the lattice. Interpretation of the phase diagram and discussion of different impurity positions on the lattice give us a broader view about the possibility for the realization of the pseudogap Kondo model on graphene.

The rest of the paper is structured as follows. Section II describes the model and basic parameters of the system under investigation, as well as the simulation method in use (mainly the continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo method Gull et al. (2011)). Section III presents the full phase diagram of the pseudogap Anderson model when the impurity is placed on top of an atom in the honeycomb lattice. Section IV analyzes the behaviors of each phase boundary presented in Sec. III. Section V discusses the situations where the impurity is placed at different locations in the host material. Finally, Section VI concludes our study.

II Model and Methods

II.1 Model

We consider the problem of a correlated impurity placed on an uncorrelated metallic layer. The host metallic layer is a honeycomb lattice with only one uncorrelated orbital per site, simulating a graphene sheet [see Figure 1(a)]. The impurity is assumed to have only one correlated ss orbital. Fig. 1(a) marks three impurity positions of high probability on graphene Wehling et al. (2010a); Eelbo et al. (2013); Virgus et al. (2014) that we take into account: (a) impurity located on top of an atom (the top site tt), (b) at the center of the hexagon of six atoms (the hollow site hh), (c) in the middle of two neighboring atoms (the bridge site bb).

Refer to caption
Figure 1: (a) Three possible possitions of an impurity on the honeycomb lattice (graphene): at the hollow site (hh), at the bridge site (bb), and at the top site (tt). The honeycomb lattice vectors are 𝒂1=(3/2,3/2)\bm{a}_{1}=(3/2,\sqrt{3}/2), 𝒂2=(3/2,3/2)\bm{a}_{2}=(3/2,-\sqrt{3}/2) where the length of each edge of the hexagon is set to 1. A unit cell has two atoms AA and BB at positions 𝝉A=(0,0)\bm{\tau}_{A}=(0,0) and 𝝉𝑩=(1/2,3/2)\bm{\tau_{B}}=(1/2,-\sqrt{3}/2) corresponding to the two sublattices. (b) The first Brillouin zone (BZ1) of this honeycomb lattice is defined by two reciprocal vectors 𝒃1\bm{b}_{1} and 𝒃2\bm{b}_{2}. The two valleys are at K=(2π/3,2π/(33))K=(2\pi/3,2\pi/(3\sqrt{3})) and K=(2π/3,2π/(33))K^{\prime}=(2\pi/3,-2\pi/(3\sqrt{3})).

We focus on a more general Anderson impurity model Anderson (1961), of which the Kondo model is a special case. The Hamiltonian has three parts: the Hamiltonian of the host material (HhostH_{host}), the local impurity Hamiltonian (HlocH_{loc}), and the hybridization between the impurity and the host (HhybH_{hyb}).

H=Hbath+Hloc+Hhyb.H=H_{bath}+H_{loc}+H_{hyb}. (1)

The Hamiltonian of the host material is constructed using the tight binding approach, where conduction electrons can only hop from one site to sites nearby. The nearest neighbor hopping tt is the most important one, and is used as the basic energy scale in this paper. The next-nearest neighbor conduction electron hopping tt^{\prime}, if there is, only plays the role of an additional chemical potential, and thus is neglected in this study. Thus the analytic form, which can be obtained elsewhere Castro Neto et al. (2009); Fritz and Vojta (2013), reads

Hbath=𝒌σ(cA𝒌σcB𝒌σ)K^𝒌(cA𝒌σcB𝒌σ),H_{bath}=\sum_{\bm{k}\sigma}\begin{pmatrix}c^{\dagger}_{A\bm{k}\sigma}&c^{\dagger}_{B\bm{k}\sigma}\end{pmatrix}\cdot\hat{K}_{\bm{k}}\cdot\begin{pmatrix}c_{A\bm{k}\sigma}\\ c_{B\bm{k}\sigma}\end{pmatrix}, (2)

where

K^𝒌\displaystyle\hat{K}_{\bm{k}} =(μπ𝒌π𝒌μ),\displaystyle=\begin{pmatrix}-\mu&\pi_{\bm{k}}\\ \pi^{*}_{\bm{k}}&-\mu\end{pmatrix}, (3)
π𝒌\displaystyle\pi_{\bm{k}} =tei𝒌𝝉B[1+ei𝒌𝒂2+ei𝒌(𝒂1𝒂2)].\displaystyle=-te^{i\bm{k}\bm{\tau}_{B}}[1+e^{-i\bm{k}\bm{a}_{2}}+e^{i\bm{k}(\bm{a}_{1}-\bm{a}_{2})}]. (4)

The operator cα𝒌σc_{\alpha\bm{k}\sigma} (cα𝒌σc^{\dagger}_{\alpha\bm{k}\sigma}) is the annihilation (creation) operator of conduction electrons from the host, with α=A,B\alpha=A,B denoting the AA and BB sublattices of the honeycomb lattice [see Fig. 1(a)], μ\mu is the chemical potential. The position vector τA\tau_{A} (τB\tau_{B}), specifying the location atom AA (BB) in the unit cell, is defined in the caption of Fig. 1 and illustrated in the same figure. The 𝒌\bm{k} sum is carried out over the first Brillouin zone (BZ1) as plotted Fig. 1(b).

It is known that the energy dispersion of graphene has two valleys KK and KK^{\prime} in the BZ1 [see Fig. 1(b)], expanding kk around those valleys results in linear dispersion ϵk3t±vF|k|\epsilon_{k}\approx 3t^{\prime}\pm v_{F}|k| where vF=3t2v_{F}=\frac{3t}{2} is the Fermi velocity Castro Neto et al. (2009). Consequently, with t=0t^{\prime}=0, the DOS for this two-dimensional lattice is linear ν(ϵ)|ϵ|/vF2\nu(\epsilon)\sim|\epsilon|/v^{2}_{F}, which is the linear pseudogap feature required by our study. The chemical potential is set to 0 to ensure that the Fermi level is at the charge neutral point, which is also necessary for the pseudogap Kondo model.

The local Hamiltonian of the impurity contains the onsite Hubbard interaction term with the correlation strength UU and the energy level ϵd\epsilon_{d} of impurity electrons

Hloc=σϵddσdσ+Undnd,H_{loc}=\sum_{\sigma}\epsilon_{d}d^{\dagger}_{\sigma}d_{\sigma}+Un_{d\uparrow}n_{d\downarrow}, (5)

Finally, the hybridization part reads

Hhyb=𝒌ασ(Vα𝒌cα𝒌σdσ+h.c.).H_{hyb}=\sum_{\bm{k}\alpha\sigma}(V_{\alpha\bm{k}}c^{\dagger}_{\alpha\bm{k}\sigma}d_{\sigma}+h.c.). (6)

where Vα𝒌V_{\alpha\bm{k}} is the hybridization coefficient in the reciprocal space, α=A,B\alpha=A,B is the sublattice index, σ\sigma is the spin index. Based on the hybridization in the real space V(𝑹+τα,𝑹imp)V(\bm{R}+\tau_{\alpha},\bm{R}_{imp}), which is usually limited to the electron hopping between the impurity and neighbor lattice sites, Vα𝒌V_{\alpha\bm{k}} is calculated as

Vα𝒌=1NRei𝒌(𝑹+𝝉α𝑹imp)V(𝑹+𝝉α,𝑹imp).V_{\alpha\bm{k}}=\dfrac{1}{\sqrt{N}}\sum_{R}e^{-i\bm{k}(\bm{R}+\bm{\tau}_{\alpha}-\bm{R}_{imp})}V(\bm{R}+\bm{\tau}_{\alpha},\bm{R}_{imp}). (7)

where 𝑹imp\bm{R}_{imp} is the position of the impurity, 𝝉α\bm{\tau}_{\alpha} is the position of an atom in the unit cell, as defined above. Similar to the tight binding calculation for the host material, the dominant V(𝑹+𝝉α,𝑹imp)V(\bm{R}+\bm{\tau}_{\alpha},\bm{R}_{imp}) terms in Eq. (7) that contribute to Vα𝒌V_{\alpha\bm{k}} are the nearest neighbor hybridizations. We denote these hybridizations as v0=V(𝒓nn,𝑹imp)v_{0}=V(\bm{r}_{nn},\bm{R}_{imp}) where 𝒓nn\bm{r}_{nn} are the positions of the nearest-neighbor sites, which depend on the location of the impurity on the lattice. Hybridization to sites of larger distance are neglected. In our work, we consider mostly the hybridization in the dynamical form

Δσ(z)=k(VAk,VBk)(𝟙zKk)1(VAkVBk),\begin{split}\Delta_{\sigma}(z)&=\sum_{k}(V^{*}_{Ak},V^{*}_{Bk})\cdot(\mathbb{1}z-K_{k})^{-1}\cdot\begin{pmatrix}V_{Ak}\\ V_{Bk}\end{pmatrix},\end{split} (8)

where 𝟙\mathbb{1} is the 2×22\times 2 identity matrix. The variable zz represents general frequency. To obtain the Matsubara (real frequency) hybridization function, we replace zz by the Matsubara frequency iωni\omega_{n} (ω+i0+\omega+i0^{+}). The impurity Green function reads

Gσimp(z)=[zϵdΔσ(z)Σσ(z)]1,G_{\sigma}^{imp}(z)=\left[z-\epsilon_{d}-\Delta_{\sigma}(z)-\Sigma_{\sigma}(z)\right]^{-1}, (9)

where the self-energy Σσimp(z)\Sigma_{\sigma}^{imp}(z) characterizes the correlation effects of impurity electrons.

II.2 Methods

For the entire study, the most difficult part is the treatment of the correlation effects emerging from the onsite Hubbard interaction of the impurity electrons. In this work, we employ the hybridization expansion version of the continuous-time QMC impurity solver Werner et al. (2006); Gull et al. (2011) (CT-HYB) provided by the TRIQS package Parcollet et al. (2015); Seth et al. (2016). CT-HYB is our method of choice for several reasons: it provides a full treatment for the correlation with numerically exact solution; the simulation works for a wide range of input parameters and for any given DOS of the host material; finally, it allows us to measure dynamical quantities such as spin-spin correlation or the Green function of the impurity even at the critical point.

To ensure the quality of our CT-QMC calculations, we choose the technical parameters for the simulations as follows. The number of Monte Carlo updates between two consecutive measurements is set at 200200. Global update by swapping spin up and spin down impurity electron operators is conducted to avoid unrealistic spin polarization, and is proposed at the rate of 0.150.15. For determining the phase transition, we require simulations with the total number of measurements per simulation of at least 5×1065\times 10^{6} (typical number for large v0v_{0} measurement (v0>tv_{0}>t), for small v0v_{0} it can reach as larger as 10910^{9} measurements for each simulation). For the range of parameters under investigation, with β\beta ranging from 100/t100/t to 400/t400/t, it takes 20002000 to 35003500 seconds to finish one calculation with 128128 CPU cores.

The biggest limitation in this method is that it is computationally expensive. Even without the sign problem Troyer and Wiese (2005), the complexity increases as rapidly as O(1T3)O\left(\frac{1}{T^{3}}\right) when the temperature decreases Gull et al. (2011). Therefore, within this method, we are unable to reach low temperature regime well below the Kondo scale. However, by assuming the inverse temperature β=1/T\beta=1/T as the “size” of the system, one can apply techniques from large-scale Monte Carlo simulation for this study Glossop et al. (2011); Pixley et al. (2012); Binder (1981). Binder analysis Binder (1981), an effective method for studying critical point in large-scale Monte Carlo method, is employed to determine the QCPs. Following Refs. Glossop et al. (2011); Pixley et al. (2012), we set the Binder parameter as BT(ϵd,v0,U)=mz4mz22B_{T}(\epsilon_{d},v_{0},U)=\dfrac{\langle m_{z}^{4}\rangle}{\langle m_{z}^{2}\rangle^{2}} where mz=ndndm_{z}=n_{d\uparrow}-n_{d\downarrow}.

As demonstrated in Figure 2, for all our calculations, we keep v0v_{0} and UU fixed while varying ϵd\epsilon_{d} and run simulations for several temperatures in order to determine QCPs. As a result, there are several ϵd\epsilon_{d}-dependent Binder curves, each of them corresponds to a specific temperature TT. They nearly intersect at one point. The crossing point of each pair of curves of two consecutive temperatures T1T_{1} and T2T_{2} gives an estimate of the critical value ϵdc(T)\epsilon_{d}^{c}(T) where 1T=1/T1+1/T22\frac{1}{T}=\frac{1/T_{1}+1/T_{2}}{2}. By linear extrapolation to zero temperature, we obtain the critical ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c} [see the inset of Fig. 2]. We note that, the linearity of the crossing points is not maintained for the whole range of temperature, e.g. in Fig. 2, the crossing point of the highest temperature in the simulation T0.0133tT\approx 0.0133t stays out of the fitting line for the remaining points. Indeed, in most of our simulations, this temperature is out of the linear region for fitting, thus it is neglected in the extrapolation. On the other hand, simulations at low temperature require much longer time for reliable results, and a finer ϵd\epsilon_{d} grid is needed for the linear extrapolation. For example, in the inset of Fig. 2, the two points corresponding to the two lowest temperatures are computationally more expensive to obtain but do not significantly improve the extrapolation. Therefore, in this work, we choose the inverse temperatures β=1T\beta=\frac{1}{T} in the range from 100/t100/t to 400/t400/t for linear extrapolating critical point.

Refer to caption
Figure 2: Demonstration for determining the critical point (ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c}) at fixed U=0.15tU=0.15t and v0=0.5tv_{0}=0.5t: the Binder parameter BTB_{T} vs. impurity energy level ϵd\epsilon_{d} for several different temperatures TT. The crossing point of two curves of two consecutive temperatures gives an estimate of ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c}. Inset: the plot of ϵd(T)\epsilon_{d}(T) vs. TT for all crossing points in the Binder plot; the straight line is the linear fit for all but the point of the largest temperature (T0.0133tT\approx 0.0133t). The intercept of the linear fit is the critical value ϵdc=0.13197(9)t\epsilon_{d}^{c}=-0.13197(9)t.

Binder analysis does not only give us the position of the critical point ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c} but also help to distinguish phases. Considering the region below half-filling, for ϵd<ϵdc\epsilon_{d}<\epsilon_{d}^{c}, the Binder parameter becomes larger as TT decreases, signifiying the strong coupling between impurity local moment and conduction electrons, suggesting the Kondo screening phase. In contrast, for ϵd>ϵdc\epsilon_{d}>\epsilon_{d}^{c}, the Binder parameter decreases to 11 as TT decreases, which is the signature that the local moment is decoupled and becomes a free moment, thus suggesting the free local moment phase Glossop et al. (2011); Pixley et al. (2012). Fig. 2 illustrates these behaviors.

In this work, we vary all physical parameters for simulations to construct the full phase diagram. The set of parameters for investigation is {U,ϵd,v0}\{U,\epsilon_{d},v_{0}\}. UU is varied between 0 and 0.2t0.2t, v0v_{0} is from 0 to less than 2t2t. The impurity energy level (plus the shifting due to the real part of the hybridization function if existing) is varied within the range (U,0)(-U,0). The lowest temperature in use for constructing the phase diagram is T=t400T=\frac{t}{400}. Dynamical quantities such as the imaginary-time Green function G(τ)G(\tau), the self-energy Σ(iωn)\Sigma(i\omega_{n}) and the spin-spin correlation function Cs(τ)=σz(τ)σz(0)C_{s}(\tau)=\langle\sigma_{z}(\tau)\sigma_{z}(0)\rangle (with σz=ndnd\sigma_{z}=n_{d\uparrow}-n_{d\downarrow}) are also measured when necessary.

III Impurity on top of an atom

The main part of our study is the investigation for the case of an impurity on top of an atom in the honeycomb lattice (the tt site), which will be presented thoroughly in this and the next sections. We start by constructing the full phase diagram for this case. If considering the nearest neighbor hopping tt of conduction electrons as the basic energy scale and neglecting further hopping or hybridization, the phase diagram is a three-dimensional one with respect to the impurity energy level ϵd\epsilon_{d}, the Hubbard interaction strength UU and the nearest neighbor hybridization v0v_{0}.

Assuming the impurity is on top of an AA site in the honeycomb lattice, the hybridization function for the impurity is calculated using Eq. (8) with VAk=v0V_{Ak}=v_{0} and VBk=0V_{Bk}=0. It is indeed a replication of the corresponding honeycomb lattice Green function, differed only by a prefactor v022\frac{v_{0}^{2}}{2}. Thus the hybridization spectrum is related to the DOS of the lattice as

1πImΔσ(ω)=v022ν(ω).-\dfrac{1}{\pi}\mathrm{Im}\Delta_{\sigma}(\omega)=\dfrac{v_{0}^{2}}{2}\nu(\omega). (10)

As we later examine in Fig. 8 the hybridization function for three impurity positions, the impurity at the tt site is the only case which exhibits symmetric hybridization spectrum. Thus it is the closest to the low-energy r=1r=1-pseudogap Kondo model Gonzalez-Buxton and Ingersent (1998); Pixley et al. (2012). Therefore, in order to avoid unnecessary complication, the case of an impurity on top of a lattice site is under full consideration in this work.

Refer to caption
Figure 3: (a) The v0v_{0} vs. ϵd\epsilon_{d} phase boundaries of the pseudogap Anderson model of an impurity at the tt site for three different UU values (solid lines). The region bounded by a phase boundary and the corresponding U=ϵdU=-\epsilon_{d} line (the vertical dashed line) is the Kondo screening phase, the region on the right of the phase boundary is the free local moment phase. (b) The full v0v_{0} vs. ϵd\epsilon_{d} phase diagram at U=0.15tU=0.15t. The vertical red dashed lines are ϵd=U\epsilon_{d}=-U and ϵd=0\epsilon_{d}=0; the dotted line is ϵd=U2\epsilon_{d}=-\frac{U}{2}. (c) The UU vs. ϵd\epsilon_{d} phase diagram at v0=0.5tv_{0}=0.5t. In panels (b) and (c), the yellow regions mark the free local moment phase, the cyan regions mark the Kondo screening phase. The error bars the of points constructing the phase boundaries are smaller than the symbol size.

We present in Figure 3 the phase diagrams in the (v0,ϵd)(v_{0},\epsilon_{d}) plane [panels (a) and (b)] and in the (U,ϵd)(U,\epsilon_{d}) plane [panel (c)] where the remaining parameter is kept constant. As noted previously, because these are quantum phase transitions, it requires low temperature for investigation. For nonzero-temperature methods such as CT-HYB, we can employ Binder analysis (see Sec. II.2) to extrapolate critical points from high-temperature calculations Binder (1981); Glossop et al. (2011); Pixley et al. (2012). All the phase boundaries in Fig. 3 are determined in this way. To justify the Binder analysis approach, we present in Appendix B additional measurements of the occupancy and the spin susceptibility for a specific case to confirm the existence of the critical points.

For the pseudogap model where the DOS of the host material is ν(ω)|ω|r\nu(\omega)\sim|\omega|^{r} with r>rmax=1/2r>r_{max}=1/2, there is no phase transition at the particle-hole symmetric point ϵd=U2\epsilon_{d}=-\frac{U}{2}, regardless of how large UU is Gonzalez-Buxton and Ingersent (1998). It means that at half-filling, the impurity local moment is always decoupled from the conduction electrons, i.e. the free local moment phase. Only when ϵd\epsilon_{d} is shifted away from the particle-hole symmetry, a mixed-valence quantum critical point may occur Pixley et al. (2012) for the transition to the phase of screened local moment (the Kondo phase), as illustrated in Fig. 3. In all phase diagrams, the line ϵd=U2\epsilon_{d}=-\frac{U}{2} divides the phase diagram into two regions above and below half-filling, each of which contains only one phase boundary line separating the two phases. For the region of less than half-filling (ϵd<U2\epsilon_{d}<-\frac{U}{2}), the left side of the phase boundary is the Kondo screening phase, while the right side is the free local moment phase. Because of the particle-hole symmetry at ϵd=U2\epsilon_{d}=-\frac{U}{2}, the phase diagram is symmetric about this line. Thus, in Fig. 3(b) and (c), we plot the region of ϵd>U2\epsilon_{d}>-\frac{U}{2} as the mirror image of the other half-plane.

Focusing only on the region of less than half-filling ϵd<U2\epsilon_{d}<-\frac{U}{2}, we find that the critical value ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c} is always in the range [U,U2][-U,-\frac{U}{2}] and it depends monotonically on v0v_{0}. In Fig. 3(a) and (b), ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c} approaches U-U as v00v_{0}\to 0 and tends to approach U2-\frac{U}{2} as v0v_{0}\to\infty. This dependence has been proposed elsewhere Chowdhury and Ingersent (2015) but no quantitative calculation has been conducted until now. To understand this, one recalls that in conventional Kondo models, the Kondo scale depends strongly on the hybridization function around the Fermi level. Because the resonance width depends on the hybridization spectrum at the Fermi level Δr1πImΔ(ω=0)\Delta_{r}\sim-\frac{1}{\pi}\mathrm{Im}\Delta(\omega=0), the Kondo physics for symmetric hybridization spectrum can be observed if UΔr<ϵd<Δr-U-\Delta_{r}<\epsilon_{d}<\Delta_{r} Krishna-murthy et al. (1980a); Hewson (1997). For the pseudogap model, Δr=0\Delta_{r}=0, the necessary condition to observe the Kondo physics is U<ϵd<0-U<\epsilon_{d}<0. However, because there is no phase transition at half-filling for r=1r=1 pseudogap model, the line ϵd=U2\epsilon_{d}=-\frac{U}{2} is the upper limit for all phase boundary curves in this region. Besides, the local moment screening effect is enhanced by the hybridization strength v0v_{0} and the valence mixing controlled by ϵd\epsilon_{d}. Therefore, at large v0v_{0}, a small amount of valence mixing is enough to screen the impurity local moment, which means ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c} is closer to U2-\frac{U}{2} as v0v_{0} increases.

Interestingly, we find that in Fig. 3(c) the phase boundary plotted in the (U,ϵd)(U,\epsilon_{d}) plane exhibits linear behavior

Uc=αtϵdc,U^{c}=-\alpha_{t}\epsilon_{d}^{c}, (11)

where αt\alpha_{t} is defined as the slope of the phase boundary, which depends strongly on v0v_{0}. We will study several aspects of this linear feature. First, we examine the dependence of the (Uc,ϵdc)(U^{c},\epsilon_{d}^{c}) line on v0v_{0}. Second, we compare it with that of low-energy pseudogap impurity models which are often used in literature, i.e. models where the DOS of the host is ν(ω)|ω|r\nu(\omega)\sim|\omega|^{r} Withoff and Fradkin (1990); Gonzalez-Buxton and Ingersent (1998).

Refer to caption
Figure 4: The phase boundaries in the (U,ϵd)(U,\epsilon_{d}) plane plotted for various v0v_{0} values. Lines of increasing v0/tv_{0}/t appear along the direction of the black solid arrow. The black dashed line is the lower limit ϵd=U\epsilon_{d}=-U, the black dotted line is the upper limit ϵd=U/2\epsilon_{d}=-U/2. The red dotted line is the phase boundary for the conventional pseudogap Anderson model [see Eq. (13)] which has the same hybridization spectrum slope as the honeycomb lattice model at v0=0.5tv_{0}=0.5t. Inset: the slope αt\alpha_{t} of the UcU^{c} vs. ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c} line depending on (v0/t)2(v_{0}/t)^{2}. The error bars of αt\alpha_{t} in the inset are comparable to the symbol size except for the point of largest v0v_{0}.

In Fig. 3(a), the three phase boundaries are equally distanced as UU increases but the differences between the three ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c} decreases as v0v_{0} increases, implying the dependence of αt\alpha_{t} on v0v_{0}. Based on the data for Fig. 3(a) and the fact that the phase boundary line goes towards the origin of the (U,ϵd)(U,\epsilon_{d}) plane, we plot in Figure 4 the phase boundaries for various v0v_{0} values. The phase boundaries approach ϵd=U\epsilon_{d}=-U (the black dashed line) illustrating the lower limit described above. They are all below the upper limit ϵd=U2\epsilon_{d}=-\frac{U}{2} (the black dotted line). However it requires larger v0v_{0} to observe the approach to the upper limit.

Because the Kondo effect is a low-energy physical phenomenon, we expect that even in the honeycomb lattice (graphene), the physics is only affected by changes in proximity to the Fermi level. In our case, the only change in low energy (ω0\omega\sim 0) is the slope of the hybridization spectrum. Around the Fermi level, the tight-binding DOS of graphene is linear ν(ω)=AcπvF2|ω|\nu(\omega)=\frac{A_{c}}{\pi v_{F}^{2}}|\omega| (where Ac=332A_{c}=\frac{3\sqrt{3}}{2} is the area of the unit cell and vF=3t2v_{F}=\frac{3t}{2} is the Fermi velocity) Castro Neto et al. (2009). Employing Eq. (10), the slope γt\gamma_{t} of the hybridization spectrum (a dimensionless parameter) depends only on v02v_{0}^{2}

γt=v022AcπvF2=v0233πt2.\gamma_{t}=\dfrac{v_{0}^{2}}{2}\dfrac{A_{c}}{\pi v_{F}^{2}}=\dfrac{v_{0}^{2}\sqrt{3}}{3\pi t^{2}}. (12)

We verify our statement by comparing our results for honeycomb lattice with those from standard pseudogap problem, in which the hybridization spectrum is set to have the same slope

1πImΔ(ω)=γt|ω|θ(|ω|D).-\dfrac{1}{\pi}\mathrm{Im}\Delta(\omega)=\gamma_{t}|\omega|\theta(|\omega|-D). (13)

Here the step function θ(x)\theta(x) limits the spectra to be nonzero only in the range (D,D)(-D,D), defining the bandwidth 2D2D. For simplicity, in this test we set D=tD=t. We test with v0=0.5t,0.7tv_{0}=0.5t,0.7t and 1.4t1.4t. In Fig. 4 the phase boundary of the conventional model corresponding to v0=0.5tv_{0}=0.5t (the red dotted line) is plotted for comparison. This conventional pseudogap phase boundary stays rather closely to the v0=0.5tv_{0}=0.5t phase boundary of the honeycomb lattice model, the difference between the two phase boundary slopes is 4%4\%. For other cases corresponding to v0=0.7tv_{0}=0.7t and 1.4t1.4t (not shown), the differences are 6%6\% and 5%5\%, respectively. In addition to the error in CT-HYB measurements, the difference of the phase boundaries between the honeycomb lattice model and the simplifed pseudogap model might be due to the higher energy effect that may involve, resulting in the contribution of nonlinear higher order terms in the tight-binding honeycomb lattice DOS. Nevertheless, the difference is small, thus the similarity between the two models provides evidence that, because the Kondo effect is a low-energy effect, the physics near the Fermi level plays a crucial role. In this case, it is represented by the slope of the hybridization spectra, which depends mostly on v0t\frac{v_{0}}{t}.

In the inset of Fig. 4, the dependence of the slope αt\alpha_{t} of the phase boundary on (v0t)2\left(\frac{v_{0}}{t}\right)^{2} is plotted. Interestingly, this slope depends linearly on v02v_{0}^{2} for small v0v_{0} (v0<tv_{0}<t) and approaches the lower limit value 11 as v00v_{0}\to 0 (corresponding to ϵdc=U\epsilon_{d}^{c}=-U). For v0>tv_{0}>t, αt\alpha_{t} slowly approach the upper limit value 22 (the upper limit at half-filling ϵd=U2\epsilon_{d}=-\frac{U}{2}) as v0v_{0} increases. Thus v0v_{0} is the key factor that controls the slope αt\alpha_{t} of the (Uc,ϵdc)(U^{c},\epsilon_{d}^{c}) phase boundary. At different v0v_{0} scales, αt\alpha_{t} behaves differently.

IV Analyze the phase diagram

We will discuss in details the behavior of each type of phase boundary in the phase diagram presented in Fig. 3. In these phase boundries, there are two interesting features for further analysis: (1) the linear relation between UcU^{c} and ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c} for fixed v0v_{0}, and (2) the dependence of the slope αt=Uc/ϵdc\alpha_{t}=-U^{c}/\epsilon_{d}^{c} as well as ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c} itself on v0v_{0}. The impurity self-energy is used intensively to understand these features.

Refer to caption
Figure 5: The plot of y=ϵd+ReΣ(iω0)y=\epsilon_{d}+\mathrm{Re}\Sigma(i\omega_{0}) vs. ϵd\epsilon_{d} (where ω0=π/β\omega_{0}=\pi/\beta is the first Matsubara frequency) for U=0.15tU=0.15t and v0=0.3tv_{0}=0.3t. The solution ϵdc(T)\epsilon_{d}^{c}(T) is determined from the crossing point of the curves with the horizontal black dashed line (y=0y=0). Inset: Temperature dependence of ϵdc(T)\epsilon_{d}^{c}(T). The red horizontal dashed line marks the critical value ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c} obtained from the Binder analysis.

IV.1 Impurity self-energy

In the Kondo model, the self-energy around the Fermi level is the first signature for the correlation effects. We state that the Kondo physics, if occurs, must be accompanied with the Kondo peak of the impurity DOS around the Fermi level Hewson (1997). Otherwise, the Kondo peak disappears and there is only a more broadened peak as a result of the hybridization between the impurity energy level and the conduction band. Therefore, the onset of the quasiparticle excitations representing the Kondo peak is the signature for the QCP. The equation for the quasiparticle excitation energy reads

ωϵdReΣR(ω)ReΔ(ω)=0.\omega-\epsilon_{d}-\mathrm{Re}\Sigma_{R}(\omega)-\mathrm{Re}\Delta(\omega)=0. (14)

where ΣR(ω)\Sigma_{R}(\omega) is the retarded self-energy of the impurity. Around the Fermi level ω0\omega\to 0, ReΔ(ω)0\mathrm{Re}\Delta(\omega)\to 0 because the pseudogap hybridization spectrum is symmetric around the Fermi level. We thus obtain the criterion for the quantum phase transition

ϵdc+ReΣR(ω0)=0.\epsilon_{d}^{c}+\mathrm{Re}\Sigma_{R}(\omega\to 0)=0. (15)

In practice, ReΣR(ω0)\mathrm{Re}\Sigma_{R}(\omega\to 0) can be approximated by the Matsubara self-energy at the lowest frequency iω0=iπβi\omega_{0}=i\frac{\pi}{\beta}. In Figure 5 the dependence of ϵd+ReΣ(iω0)\epsilon_{d}+\mathrm{Re}\Sigma(i\omega_{0}) on ϵd\epsilon_{d} at various temperatures is plotted for the case of U=0.15tU=0.15t and v0=0.3tv_{0}=0.3t to demonstrate the criterion in Eq. (15). The crossing point ϵdc(T)\epsilon_{d}^{c}(T) of each curve with the y=0y=0 black dashed line is an estimate of the critical ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c} at the corresponding temperature. Decreasing the temperature, the inset of Fig. 5 shows that ϵdc(T)\epsilon_{d}^{c}(T) approaches the critical value ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c} obtained from the Binder analysis, justifying the critical condition in Eq. (15). Therefore ReΣ(iω0)\mathrm{Re}\Sigma(i\omega_{0}) can be used to understand further the physics of the phase boundary.

We first examine ReΣ(iω0)\mathrm{Re}\Sigma(i\omega_{0}) at the lowest temperature used in our simulation (T=t400T=\frac{t}{400}) for different values of ϵd\epsilon_{d}, UU and v0v_{0}. Figure 6 exhibits the dependence of ReΣ(iω0)\mathrm{Re}\Sigma(i\omega_{0}) on ϵd\epsilon_{d} for different sets of (U,v0)(U,v_{0}) around the critical values ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c}. It shows that when ϵd\epsilon_{d} is varied around the critical region (in the range of a few percent of UU around ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c}), ReΣ(iω0)\mathrm{Re}\Sigma(i\omega_{0}) is nearly constant (changed by about 0.5%0.5\%). Thus, for each case of (U,v0)(U,v_{0}) one can estimate ReΣ(iω0)\mathrm{Re}\Sigma(i\omega_{0}) at criticality without the need for a highly accurate ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c}. In Fig. 6, ReΣ(iω0)\mathrm{Re}\Sigma(i\omega_{0}) behaves similarly to ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c}, it changes linearly with respect to UU when keeping v0v_{0} fixed. When we increase v0v_{0} from 0.5t0.5t to 0.7t0.7t, this linear relation is changed in the same way as that of UcU^{c} vs. ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c} [see Fig. 3(a)]. Therefore, despite at nonzero temperature, ReΣ(iω0)\mathrm{Re}\Sigma(i\omega_{0}) reflects reasonably the value of ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c}, justifying Eq. (15).

Refer to caption
Figure 6: Real part of the self energy ReΣ(iω0)\mathrm{Re}\Sigma(i\omega_{0}) depending on ϵdϵdcU\frac{\epsilon_{d}-\epsilon_{d}^{c}}{U} plotted for several sets of (U,v0)(U,v_{0}). Solid lines (dashed lines) correspond to v0=0.5tv_{0}=0.5t (v0=0.7tv_{0}=0.7t). Lines of the same color and symbol are for the same UU.

IV.2 Linear relation between UcU^{c} and ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c}

From the mean field theory for the Anderson impurity model, the self-energy is approximated by the Hartree term ΣσH=Undσ¯\Sigma^{H}_{\sigma}=Un_{d\bar{\sigma}} where ndσ=n^dσn_{d\sigma}=\langle\hat{n}_{d\sigma}\rangle is the impurity occupancy per spin. The mean-field theory still has an impact even in the solution of the flatband symmetric Anderson model where the real part of the self-energy at zero frequency is exactly equal to the Hartree term ReΣσ(ω0)=Undσ¯\mathrm{Re}\Sigma_{\sigma}(\omega\to 0)=Un_{d\bar{\sigma}} Horvatić and Zlatić (1980); Bulla et al. (1998). Extending to strongly correlated lattice systems, previous works Dang et al. (2014a, b) suggest that the correlated electron occupancy characterize the correlation strength of a system based on how localized the correlated electrons are. Unless a phase transition occurs, properties such as spectral functions may only experience minor changes when the interaction UU is increased as long as ndσn_{d\sigma} remains unchanged. Thus it encourages us to examine the impurity occupancy nd=nd+ndn_{d}=n_{d\uparrow}+n_{d\downarrow} at criticality, which is estimated by interpolating the occupancy for various ϵd\epsilon_{d} around the critical point. From Eqs. (11) and (15), the relation ReΣ(ω0)=1αtU\mathrm{Re}\Sigma(\omega\to 0)=\frac{1}{\alpha_{t}}U means that the inversed slope 1/αt1/\alpha_{t} might be closely related to ndn_{d}. Figure 7(a) shows ndn_{d} in comparison with 1/αt1/\alpha_{t} for a wide range of v0v_{0} extracted from various (Uc,ϵdc)(U^{c},\epsilon_{d}^{c}) phase boundaries. We note that in the atomic limit, dnddϵd\frac{dn_{d}}{d\epsilon_{d}} becomes large, thus the value of ndn_{d} at v00v_{0}\to 0 contains large error bar, causing the noise of ndn_{d} at small v0v_{0} in Fig. 7(a).

Refer to caption
Figure 7: (a) Impurity occupancy vs. v02v_{0}^{2} for U=0.10t,0.15tU=0.10t,0.15t and 0.20t0.20t. The inversed slope 1α\frac{1}{\alpha} is also plotted for comparison. The black dashed line marks the limit of ndn_{d} as v00v_{0}\to 0. The black dashed dotted line marks the limit of ndn_{d} as v0v_{0}\to\infty and the limit of α\alpha as v00v_{0}\to 0. The black dotted line marks the limit of αt\alpha_{t} as v0v_{0}\to\infty. (b) The dependence of ΔReΣU\frac{\Delta\mathrm{Re}\Sigma}{U} on ndσ¯12n_{d\bar{\sigma}}-\frac{1}{2} for three UU values. The blue dashed line is the least-square fitting line with the slope 2.33(7)2.33(7) and the intercept 0.056(8)-0.056(8).

Fig. 7(a) gives us useful information. First, the two limits of v0v_{0} for the plot can be calculated exactly. In the atomic limit v00v_{0}\to 0, nd=43n_{d}=\frac{4}{3} and αt=1\alpha_{t}=1; whereas at v0v_{0}\to\infty, the impurity reaches half-filling, nd=1n_{d}=1 and αt=2\alpha_{t}=2. In our simulations, both ndn_{d} and 1/αt1/\alpha_{t} approach these limits, although it may require simulations of larger v0v_{0} to observe more clearly the asymtotic behavior at v0v_{0}\to\infty. Second, 1/αt1/\alpha_{t} varies in a similar way as ndn_{d}, suggesting that the real part of the self-energy behave similarly to the Hartree term |ϵdc|=ReΣσ(ω0)Undσ¯|\epsilon_{d}^{c}|=\mathrm{Re}\Sigma_{\sigma}(\omega\to 0)\sim Un_{d\bar{\sigma}}. It motivates us to investigate the difference between ReΣ(ω0)\mathrm{Re}\Sigma(\omega\to 0) and the Hartree self-energy

ΔReΣ=ReΣσ(ω0)Undσ¯.\Delta\mathrm{Re}\Sigma=\mathrm{Re}\Sigma_{\sigma}(\omega\to 0)-Un_{d\bar{\sigma}}. (16)

We argue that, as ndn_{d} behaves similarly to 1/αt1/\alpha_{t} and is weakly dependent on UU and the self-energy reaches Hartree value as the impurity reaches half-filling, ΔReΣ\Delta\mathrm{Re}\Sigma can be an explicit function of UU and ndσ¯1/2n_{d\bar{\sigma}}-1/2, i.e. ΔReΣ=f(U,ndσ¯1/2)\Delta\mathrm{Re}\Sigma=f(U,n_{d\bar{\sigma}}-1/2). It suggests that at critical points one rescale ΔReΣ\Delta\mathrm{Re}\Sigma by UU and plot with respect to ndσ¯1/2n_{d\bar{\sigma}}-1/2 so that both xx and yy axes are dimensionless. Interestingly, Figure 7(b) shows that, in such a plot, points of three different UU’s seem to collapse within numerical error bars. Therefore, we may express ReΣ(ω0)\mathrm{Re}\Sigma(\omega\to 0) at criticality by an empirical formula

ReΣσ(ω0)=Undσ¯+cU(ndσ¯12),\mathrm{Re}\Sigma_{\sigma}(\omega\to 0)=Un_{d\bar{\sigma}}+cU(n_{d\bar{\sigma}}-\dfrac{1}{2}), (17)

where c=2.32(7)c=2.32(7) is the slope of the fitting line in Fig. 7(b). In the limit of v00v_{0}\to 0, ndσ23n_{d\sigma}\to\frac{2}{3} and ReΣ(ω0)U\mathrm{Re}\Sigma(\omega\to 0)\to U, then c=2c=2. The difference between numerical and asymptotic results of cc might be understood if simulations at small v0v_{0} could be conducted, which is however unavailable in this work. As a result, given Eq. (17) and using c=2c=2, 1αt\frac{1}{\alpha_{t}} is expressed in terms of nd=2ndσn_{d}=2n_{d\sigma} as

1αt=1+c2ndc2=32nd1.\dfrac{1}{\alpha_{t}}=\dfrac{1+c}{2}n_{d}-\dfrac{c}{2}=\dfrac{3}{2}n_{d}-1. (18)

We come to an interpretation that at criticality, ndn_{d} tends to determine the screening of the impurity interaction, in similarity to lattice correlated systems Dang et al. (2014a, b). When UU is increased, ndn_{d} tends to be fixed in order to keep the physics at criticality remains unchanged, explaining the weak dependence of ndn_{d} on UU, as seen in Fig. 7(a). As ReΣ(ω0)\mathrm{Re}\Sigma(\omega\to 0) can be expressed purely by UU and ndn_{d}, it explains the linearity of the phase boundaries in the (U,ϵd)(U,\epsilon_{d}) plane as plotted in Fig. 4.

IV.3 The role of v0v_{0}

Different from the UcU^{c} vs. ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c} linear relation discussed in the previous subsection, the dependence of ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c} and αt\alpha_{t} on v0v_{0} is nonlinear. From Eqs. (8) and (10), v0v_{0} enters the hybridization formula as v02v_{0}^{2}. Thus one can think of expanding ReΣ(ω0)\mathrm{Re}\Sigma(\omega\to 0) with respect to v02v_{0}^{2} (1/v021/v_{0}^{2}) at small (large) v0v_{0}. Indeed, one could employ strong- or weak-coupling perturbation theories Dai et al. (2005); Yosida and Yamada (1975); Horvatić and Zlatić (1980) (with ϵd\epsilon_{d} adjusted to equals ReΣ(ω0)\mathrm{Re}\Sigma(\omega\to 0)) to estimate ReΣ(ω0)\mathrm{Re}\Sigma(\omega\to 0) so as to explain the numerical results in the limit of small and large v0v_{0} presented in Sec. III. It is however beyond the scope of this work. In this subsection, we attempt to obtain an empirical formula for the self-energy, which serves as the suggestion for future perturbative calculations of this model.

From Eqs. (11) and (15), the self-energy can be estimated based on the slope of the (Uc,ϵdc)(U^{c},\epsilon_{d}^{c}) phase boundary

ReΣ(ω0)=Ucαt.\mathrm{Re}\Sigma(\omega\to 0)=\dfrac{U^{c}}{\alpha_{t}}. (19)

We then expand αt\alpha_{t} with respect to v02v_{0}^{2} (1/v021/v_{0}^{2}) at small (large) v0v_{0}. Based the inset of Fig. 4, we expect that, at small v0v_{0},

αt1+av02,\alpha_{t}\approx 1+av_{0}^{2}, (20)

while at large v0v_{0}

αt24bv02,\alpha_{t}\approx 2-\dfrac{4b}{v_{0}^{2}}, (21)

where aa and bb are fitting parameters. The constant terms 11 and 22 are the values at the limits v00v_{0}\to 0 and v0v_{0}\to\infty, respectively. After fitting, the results are a=0.383(2)/t2a=0.383(2)/t^{2} and b=0.19(1)t2b=0.19(1)t^{2}. Replace aa and bb into Eq. (19) and use the approximation 11±x1x\dfrac{1}{1\pm x}\approx 1\mp x for x1x\ll 1, we obtain the empirical formulas for the real part of the self-energy at zero frequency at critical points

ReΣ(ω0)\displaystyle\mathrm{Re}\Sigma(\omega\to 0) =Uc(1av02)\displaystyle=U^{c}(1-av_{0}^{2}) if v00,\displaystyle\text{if }v_{0}\to 0, (22)
ReΣ(ω0)\displaystyle\mathrm{Re}\Sigma(\omega\to 0) =Uc(12+bv02)\displaystyle=U^{c}\left(\dfrac{1}{2}+\dfrac{b}{v_{0}^{2}}\right) if v0,\displaystyle\text{if }v_{0}\to\infty,

We note that the parameters aa and bb can be fitted directly using the self-energy data ReΣ(iω0)\mathrm{Re}\Sigma(i\omega_{0}) or the critical values ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c} at different v0v_{0}. However, it turns out that fitting using ReΣ(iω0)\mathrm{Re}\Sigma(i\omega_{0}) or ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c} requires rather small v0U\frac{v_{0}}{U} (large Uv0\frac{U}{v_{0}}) to estimate aa (bb), which exceeds our simulation capability. With the data used to construct Fig. 3, fitting the self-energy with v0<0.7tv_{0}<0.7t gives a=0.55(1)/t2,0.48(1)/t2a=0.55(1)/t^{2},0.48(1)/t^{2} and 0.44(1)/t20.44(1)/t^{2} for U=0.1t,0.15tU=0.1t,0.15t and 0.2t0.2t; with v0>0.8tv_{0}>0.8t, it gives b=0.11(2)t2,0.15(3)t2b=0.11(2)t^{2},0.15(3)t^{2} and 0.17(3)t20.17(3)t^{2}. These fittings are thus unstable, showing clear dependence of aa and bb on UU. Obtaining aa and bb by fitting the slope αt\alpha_{t} is more advantageous because it exploits the linear relation between UcU^{c} and ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c}, thus neglecting the dependence on UcU^{c}. The data for v0v_{0} in the range from 0.10.1 to 1.71.7 together with the limit v00v_{0}\to 0 and v0v_{0}\to\infty is enough for fitting αt\alpha_{t}. Hence, the results a=0.383(2)/t2a=0.383(2)/t^{2} and b=0.19(1)t2b=0.19(1)t^{2} extracted from the slope αt\alpha_{t} are more reliable.

Therefore, we present in Eq. (22) empirical formulas for ReΣ(ω0)\mathrm{Re}\Sigma(\omega\to 0) corresponding to v00v_{0}\to 0 and v0v_{0}\to\infty. These formulas can be the initial guideline for future perturbative calculations, which might help to understand further the dependence of the phase boundaries on v0v_{0}.

V At hollow and bridge sites

So far, we focus mostly on the situation where the impurity is placed on top of an atom on the honeycomb lattice. This is a special case in which the hybridization spectrum is symmetric around the Fermi level and there exists particle-hole symmetry at ϵd=U2\epsilon_{d}=-\frac{U}{2}. In general, the hybridization spectrum depends on the impurity position in the lattice. In Appendix A, we show that when the impurity departs from this tt site, it hybridizes with atoms of both sublattices, the hybridization spectrum is no longer symetric around the Fermi level. When the hybridization spectrum changes, it obviously affects the physics. In this section, we discuss briefly the effects when the impurity is placed at the hollow hh and at the bridge bb sites [see Fig. 1].

Figure 8 shows the real part and the spectrum 1πImΔ(ω)-\frac{1}{\pi}\mathrm{Im}\Delta(\omega) of the hybridization function when the impurity is placed at tt, hh and bb positions for the same v0v_{0}. Because the hybridization function is directly proportional to v02v_{0}^{2}, for simplicity, we fix v0/t=1v_{0}/t=1 in the figure. For different v0v_{0}, one simply multiplies the hybridization function with v02v_{0}^{2} to obtain a new one. Fig. 8 shows that ReΔ(ω=0)\mathrm{Re}\Delta(\omega=0) increases as the impurity changes from tbht\to b\to h. Due to contributions from both sublattices (see Appendix A), the imaginary parts obviously show the asymmetry of the hybridization spectra when the impurity is not at the tt site. We have found that while the hybridization spectra for the tt and bb sites remain linear around the Fermi level, it behaves as |ω|3|\omega|^{3} for the hh site case. Expansion around the Fermi level shows the forms of Δ(ω)\Delta(\omega) around ω=0\omega=0, of which the results are summarized in Table 1.

Refer to caption
Figure 8: The hybridization function in real frequency for the same v0v_{0} (in this plot v0=tv_{0}=t) for three impurity positions (at hollow hh, at the bridge bb and on top of an atom tt). The left panel is the real part ReΔ(ω)\mathrm{Re}\Delta(\omega). The right panel is the hybridization spectrum 1πImΔ(ω)-\frac{1}{\pi}\mathrm{Im}\Delta(\omega).

Nonzero ReΔ(ω=0)\mathrm{Re}\Delta(\omega=0) values of impurity at the bb and hh sites result in the shifting of the critical impurity level ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c}. By defining an effective energy level ϵeff=ϵd+ReΔ(ω=0)\epsilon_{eff}=\epsilon_{d}+\mathrm{Re}\Delta(\omega=0), the critical value ϵeffc\epsilon_{eff}^{c} is in the same energy range as ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c} for impurity at the tt site (U<ϵeffc<U2)(-U<\epsilon_{eff}^{c}<-\frac{U}{2}), allowing to determine ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c} in these cases more easily. The difference in the real part of Δ(ω)\Delta(\omega), of which the main effect is to introduce a shifting in ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c}, is thus not as important as the change in the imaginary part.

When placing the impurity at the bb site, the hybridization function exhibits the asymmetric spectrum, starting from the the second order of the frequency

1πImΔ(ω)=v02AcπvF2(|ω|ω22vFsgn(ω)+o(ω3)).-\dfrac{1}{\pi}\mathrm{Im}\Delta(\omega)=\dfrac{v_{0}^{2}A_{c}}{\pi v_{F}^{2}}\left(|\omega|-\dfrac{\omega^{2}}{2v_{F}}sgn(\omega)+o(\omega^{3})\right). (23)

Examining the (U,ϵd)(U,\epsilon_{d}) phase diagram at v0=0.5tv_{0}=0.5t for the tight-binding honeycomb lattice Eq. (8) and for the simplified model in Eq. (23), the phase boundaries (not shown) still exhibit linear relation. The difference of the boundary slope between the lattice model and the simplified model is about 2%2\%, which we argue that it is due to the differences in the hybridization function at frequencies away from ω=0\omega=0. Apart from that, we do not observe significant changes when changing the location of the impurity from the tt site to the bb site. Thus, although the hybridization spectrum is asymmetric, as long as the spectrum still exhibits linear behavior around the Fermi level, there is no significant change in physics.

tt bb hh
ReΔ(ω=0)\mathrm{Re}\Delta(\omega=0) 0 0.66v02\sim 0.66v_{0}^{2} 2.35v02\sim 2.35v_{0}^{2}
1πImΔ(ω)-\dfrac{1}{\pi}\mathrm{Im}\Delta(\omega) v02Ac2π|ω|vF2\dfrac{v_{0}^{2}A_{c}}{2\pi}\dfrac{|\omega|}{v_{F}^{2}} v02Acπ|ω|vF2\dfrac{v_{0}^{2}A_{c}}{\pi}\dfrac{|\omega|}{v_{F}^{2}} 9v02Ac4π|ω|3vF4\dfrac{9v_{0}^{2}A_{c}}{4\pi}\dfrac{|\omega|^{3}}{v_{F}^{4}}
Table 1: The real part of the hybridization function at ω=0\omega=0 (calculated numerically) and the hybridization spectrum 1πImΔ(ω)-\frac{1}{\pi}\mathrm{Im}\Delta(\omega) at the lowest order of ω\omega for impurity located at tt, bb and hh positions. Ac=332A_{c}=\frac{3\sqrt{3}}{2} is the area of the unit cell, vF=3t2v_{F}=\frac{3t}{2} is the Fermi velocity.

Impurity at the hh site is a different scenario. In this case, the impurity strongly hybridizes with conduction electrons of six nearest neighbor sites. We find that |ω||\omega| and ω2\omega^{2} terms in the hybridization spectrum vanish, leaving the |ω|3|\omega|^{3} term as the lowest order term in the spectrum (see Table 1). The impurity problem is transformed into an r=3r=3 pseudogap Kondo model. Due to very small hybridization spectral weight around the Fermi level, it turns out to be not easy to observe the Kondo screening phase or determine the critical point with high accuracy in this case. Indeed, our numerical calculations contain large error bars, which prohibit us from reliable extrapolation for ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c}.

Therefore, the physics of the pseudogap Kondo model of an impurity on the honeycomb lattice depends on the location of the impurity on the lattice. If it is placed at bb and tt sites, linear behavior of the host DOS is retained in the hybridization spectrum, allowing for the observation of the Kondo screening phase. However, around the hh site, the hybridization spectrum near the Fermi level is nearly depleted and becomes a different type of pseudogap model. At this impurity position, the conditions turn out to be more extreme in order to observe the Kondo physics.

VI Conclusions

In this paper, we have studied the pseudogap Anderson model for an ss-wave impurity placed on a graphene-like honeycomb lattice. We used the tight binding model to describe conduction electrons of the host material, and employed the hybridization-expansion continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo method (CT-HYB) to fully treat the correlation effect. We focused on the case the impurity is placed on top of an atom in the lattice (the tt position) and constructed the phase diagram with three parameters U,v0U,v_{0} and ϵd\epsilon_{d} for the quantum phase transition from the free local moment phase to the Kondo screening phase. We analyzed the impacts of the hybridization and the correlation strength on the phase diagram and provided insightful discussion for understanding of the phase diagram based on the self-energy of the impurity. We also discussed qualitatively the physics and the possibility to observe the Kondo screening phase when the impurity position is moved away from tt position.

The work presents calculations from high-temperature viewpoint and contains several interesting results. First, we have found that the full phase diagram exhibits interesting relations between each pair of (Uc,ϵdc)(U^{c},\epsilon_{d}^{c}) and (v0,ϵdc)(v_{0},\epsilon_{d}^{c}). The (Uc,ϵdc)(U^{c},\epsilon_{d}^{c}) phase boundary is linear for the range of v0v_{0} under investigation; while in the (v0,ϵdc)(v_{0},\epsilon_{d}^{c}) plane, ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c} exhibits v02v_{0}^{2} (or 1v02\frac{1}{v_{0}^{2}}) dependence in the limit of small (large) v0v_{0}. We have discussed the results by relating the critical value ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c} to the impurity self-energy Σ(iωn)\Sigma(i\omega_{n}) and obtained an empirical expression for the self-energy in order to gain more insights into the physics of the phase diagram. Lastly, we have found that changing the impurity from position on top of an atom to the bridge (bb) or hollow (hh) site might affect the physics. Specically, while the system remains in the r=1r=1 pseudogap Anderson model if the impurity is at the tt or bb sites, it becomes an r=3r=3 pseudogap model if the impurity is placed at the hh site.

In overall, the realization of the r=1r=1 pseudogap model in graphene is still a challenging task for both experimental and theoretical sides. Indeed, the transition from the free local moment to Kondo screening phase depends on the position of the impurity on the honeycomb lattice. The prominent case to observe the Kondo physics is when the impurity is located at the tt site, where the hybridization spectrum is symmetric and directly proportional to the DOS of the honeycomb lattice. If it is located at the hh site, it becomes a different pseudogap model and is not easy to observe the Kondo screening effect. Although the hybridization at the hollow site for a more realistic dd-wave impurity might be slightly different Wehling et al. (2010a, b), the small slope of the hybridization spectrum around the Fermi level remains and is an obstacle for any measurement of the Kondo screening phase.

Our work is restricted to the CT-HYB impurity solver, which is a high-temperature method, with an assumption of a single ss-wave impurity for the sake of simplicity. Therefore, certain limitations in the work are inevitable. The major one is that, due to the CT-HYB impurity solver, we cannot access low temperature region in order to enter the quantum critical regime and measure critical behaviors more accurately. There is also a lack of analytic calculations for asymtotic limits, such as at v00v_{0}\to 0 and v0v_{0}\to\infty, in order to verify numerical results. Moreover, the logarithmic corrections to scaling Cassanello and Fradkin (1996) for r=1r=1-pseudogap model is not considered in this work. However, these limitations open several interesting directions for future investigation. First, one might consider low-temperature approach, in particular the numerical renormalization group method Bulla et al. (2008), to treat the problem completely. Second, one might employ previous knowledge of perturbation theories Dai et al. (2005); Yosida and Yamada (1975); Horvatić and Zlatić (1980); Tong (2015) for analytic results in the asymtotic limits, which may justify our numerical results. Other questions of how the logarithmic corrections to scaling enter the numerical results, how the results change when using a more realistic dd-orbital magnetic impurity, or about the effect of substrates to the graphene layer and the impurity Ren et al. (2014); Donati et al. (2014) are also interesting open challenges.

Acknowledgments

We thank T. A. Costi for helpful discussion. This research is funded by Vietnam National Foundation for Science and Technology Development (NAFOSTED) under grant number 103.01-2018.12. We also acknowledge the support for the allocation of computing time at Jülich Supercomputing Centre. Portion of our calculation as well as data post-processing tasks has been performed using the computer cluster of Phenikaa Institute for Advanced Study.

Appendix A Particle-hole symmetry

Previous works on pseudogap Kondo problems Gonzalez-Buxton and Ingersent (1998); Glossop et al. (2011); Pixley et al. (2012); Fritz and Vojta (2013) do not consider specific lattice of the host materials. Instead, the host material is represented by a “pseudogap” DOS, and the hybridization between the impurity and the host material is assumed isotropic. Thus there is no lattice symmetry embedded in these calculations.

In this work, the honeycomb lattice is explicitly included in our calculations. The position of the impurity on the lattice plays an important role in deciding the symmetry of the whole system, and consequently affecting the Kondo physics. In this appendix, we investigate the conditions for the particle-hole symmetry, which controls the form of the hybridization function. The particle-hole symmetry can be understood conceptually as the invariance of the overall Hamiltonian when particles are transformed into holes. We consider a general particle-hole transformation ckα=Uαβ(k)akβc_{k\alpha}=U_{\alpha\beta}(k)a^{\dagger}_{-k\beta} (U^(k)\hat{U}(k) is a 2×22\times 2 unitary matrix) El-Batanouny (2020); Franz and apply it on each part of the full Hamiltonian, assuming the impurity is an ss-wave one. In a quadratic Hamiltonian (such as Eq. (2) of the Hamiltonian for the host material)

H=khαβ(k)ckαckβ,H=\sum_{k}h_{\alpha\beta}(k)c^{\dagger}_{k\alpha}c_{k\beta},

the conditions for the particle-hole symmetry of this Hamiltonian are

U(k)h(k)U(k)=h(k),Tr[h(k)]=0.\displaystyle\begin{split}U^{\dagger}(k)h(k)U(k)=&-h^{*}(-k),\\ \mathrm{Tr[h(k)]}=&0.\end{split} (24)

The corresponding transformation matrix for lattice electron creation/annihilation operators is U=eiϕkσzU=e^{i\phi_{k}}\sigma_{z} where ϕk\phi_{k} is an arbitrary kk-dependent phase and σz\sigma_{z} is the Pauli matrix along the zz direction Franz , i.e.

cAkσ=eiϕkaA,kσcBkσ=eiϕkaB,kσ.\displaystyle\begin{split}c_{Ak\sigma}&=e^{i\phi_{k}}a^{\dagger}_{A,-k\sigma}\\ c_{Bk\sigma}&=-e^{i\phi_{k}}a^{\dagger}_{B,-k\sigma}.\end{split} (25)

Thus from Eq. (24), the necessary condition for the particle-hole symmetry is that only the nearest-neighbor hopping is taken into account in Eq. (2) and the system is at the charge neutral state (μ=0\mu=0).

Considering the impurity local Hamiltonian HlocH_{loc} in Eq. (5), the particle-hole transformation for impurity electron creation/annihilation operators has the form

dσ=±eiϕkbσ.d_{\sigma}=\pm e^{i\phi_{k}}b^{\dagger}_{\sigma}. (26)

Notice that we choose the same phase ϕk\phi_{k} for both host electron and impurity electron transformation, which is necessary to maintain the particle-hole symmetry if there is, while the sign can be chosen arbitrarily. Applying this transformation on HlocH_{loc}, it becomes

Hloc=2ϵd+Uσ(ϵd+U)bσbσ+Unbnb.H_{loc}=2\epsilon_{d}+U-\sum_{\sigma}(\epsilon_{d}+U)b^{\dagger}_{\sigma}b_{\sigma}+Un_{b\uparrow}n_{b\downarrow}. (27)

Thus HlocH_{loc} remains the same form when ϵd=U/2\epsilon_{d}=-U/2.

Finally, we apply Eqs. (25) and (26) to HhybH_{hyb} in Eq. (6) where the impurity only hybridizes with the nearest neighbor atoms of the lattice. Without the loss of generality, we choose the sign to be (+)(+) in Eq. (26), for single impurity, HhybH_{hyb} becomes

Hhyb=kσ(VAkaA,kσbσVBkaB,kσbσ+h.c.)=kσ(VAkbσaA,kσ+VBkbσaB,kσ+h.c.).\begin{split}H_{hyb}&=\sum_{k\sigma}(V_{Ak}a_{A,-k\sigma}b^{\dagger}_{\sigma}-V_{Bk}a_{B,-k\sigma}b^{\dagger}_{\sigma}+h.c.)\\ &=\sum_{k\sigma}(-V^{*}_{Ak}b^{\dagger}_{\sigma}a_{A,k\sigma}+V^{*}_{Bk}b^{\dagger}_{\sigma}a_{B,k\sigma}+h.c.).\end{split} (28)

One sees that the original form of HhybH_{hyb} is no longer maintained when the impurity hybridizes with atoms of both sublattices, i.e. the particle-hole symmetry does not exist, no matter how we choose the sign in Eq. (26). The particle-hole symmetry is maintained if the impurity hybridizes with atoms of only one sublattice (with an appropriate choice of the sign in Eq. (26)). For example, in Eq.(28), if VAkV_{Ak} vanishes, the particle-hole symmetry is conserved.

Therefore, the requirements for particle-hole symmetry in this model are: (1) the hopping of conduction electrons to sites further than the nearest neighbor sites in the host is forbidded, (2) the impurity energy level is at half-filling ϵd=U/2\epsilon_{d}=-U/2 and (3) there is only hybridization between the impurity and sites of the same sublattice. Among the three positions tt, bb and hh as in Fig. 1(a), impurity at the tt site is more likely to exhibit particle-hole symmetry as the impurity is hybridized mostly to the site underneath, while impurity at bb and hh sites is hybridized with sites of both sublattices. The result is depicted in the hybridization spectrum in Fig. 8. At the tt site, the spectrum is symmetric around ω=0\omega=0 and the particle-hole symmetry is reached when ϵd=U2\epsilon_{d}=-\frac{U}{2}. At bb and hh sites, condition (3) is not satisfied, exhibiting asymmetric hybridization spectrum, there is no particle-hole symmetric point.

Defining the degree of asymmetry by the ratio between the weights of the hybridization spectrum below and above the Fermi level, one sees that this ratio is unity for impurity at the tt site, but increases as the impurity changes from bb to hh site. It characterizes how the impurity hybridizes with the host material. At the tt site, the impurity hybridizes with an atom of only one sublattice, the spectrum is symmetric. At the bb site, it hybridizes with two atoms belonging to two sublattices, the degree of asymmetry increases. At the hh site, it hybridizes with six atoms, the degree of asymmetry is the largest one. The dependence of the degree of asymmetry in the hybridization spectrum on how the impurity hybridizes with lattice atoms reflects condition (3) for the particle-hole symmetry in this model.

Appendix B Occupancy and susceptibility

Refer to caption
Figure 9: CT-HYB measurements for the case U=0.15tU=0.15t and v0=0.5tv_{0}=0.5t (the case of Fig. 2) at different temperatures TT and impurity energy levels ϵd\epsilon_{d}. (a) Occupancy ndn_{d} vs. ϵd\epsilon_{d}: each line corresponds to a fixed temperature TT. The dot symbols mark the points undergoing CT-HYB simulations. Inset: comparison of two types of extrapolation for critical point ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c} using the Binder parameter (ϵdc=0.13197(9)t\epsilon_{d}^{c}=-0.13197(9)t) and the occupancy (ϵdc=0.13214(6)t\epsilon_{d}^{c}=-0.13214(6)t). (b) Impurity spin susceptibility (multiplied by TT) vs. temperature TT. Each line corresponds to a fixed impurity level ϵd\epsilon_{d}.

Critical point for the quantum phase transition between the free local moment and the Kondo strong coupling phases is determined using the Binder analysis Binder (1981); Glossop et al. (2011); Pixley et al. (2012) as presented in Sec. II. When varying the temperature and the impurity energy level in order to observe the crossing points of Binder parameter lines, we also observe the behaviors of the impurity occupancy and the impurity spin susceptibility, which supports that the point obtained from the Binder analysis is indeed a critical point.

Figure 9(a) shows the electron occupancy of the impurity vs. ϵd\epsilon_{d}, which resembles the Binder parameter plotted in Fig. 2. At ϵdc=0.13197(9)t\epsilon_{d}^{c}=-0.13197(9)t (determined by the Binder analysis), the occupancy is nearly fixed at nd1.263n_{d}\sim 1.263. The way the impurity occupancy converges depends very much on the DOS around the Fermi level. Assuming the Fermi-Dirac distribution applied for the quasiparticles, at temperature TT, the impurity occupancy has more contribution of the DOS for energy in the range 0<ω<T0<\omega<T and less contribution of the DOS for energy in the range T<ω<0-T<\omega<0. When TT decreases, the way the impurity occupancy increases or decreases depends on whether the DOS in the range 0<ω<T0<\omega<T is larger or smaller than that in the range T<ω<0-T<\omega<0. If it is in the Kondo phase (ϵd<ϵdc\epsilon_{d}<\epsilon_{d}^{c}), the Kondo resonance peak is developed at the Fermi level, thus the impurity occupancy increases as TT decreases. In contrast, if it is in the free local-moment phase (ϵd>ϵdc\epsilon_{d}>\epsilon_{d}^{c}), the Kondo peak is suppressed, the DOS for 0<ω<T0<\omega<T is comparable with that around the Fermi level, thus the impurity occupancy decreases as TT decreases. The occupancy at criticality becomes a fixed point and can be extrapolated in terms of the crossing points similar to the Binder analysis.

The inset of Fig. 9 compares the extrapolation of ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c} using the occupancy and the Binder parameter methods. The two fiting lines corresponding to the occupancy and the Binder parameter have intercepts rather close to each other. However, the convergence of the critical impurity occupancy depends much on the hybridization strength v0v_{0}. For large v0v_{0}, it requires simulations at low temperatures to observe ndn_{d} converging to a critical value. On the other hand, Binder analysis is an well-established theoretical framework to determine critical points for finite-size simulations Binder (1981); Pixley et al. (2012), which is able to exhibit linear convergence at larger temperatures. Therefore, Binder analysis is the method of choice to determine the critical point in this work. Nevertheless, the demonstration of the impurity occupancy as a fixed point in Fig. 9 justifies the Binder analysis approach.

The QCP is also confirmed by observing the evolution of the impurity local spin susceptibility χs\chi_{s} as the impurity level crosses the critical point ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c}. The local spin susceptibility of the impurity is calculated using the spin-spin correlation function measured in the CT-HYB simulation

χs=0β𝑑τσz(τ)σz(0),\chi_{s}=\int_{0}^{\beta}d\tau\langle\sigma_{z}(\tau)\sigma_{z}(0)\rangle, (29)

where σz=ndnd\sigma_{z}=n_{d\uparrow}-n_{d\downarrow}. The product χsT\chi_{s}T is a useful criteria to see if the local moment is quenched by conduction electrons of the host Wilson (1975); Bulla et al. (2008). In this aspect, one observes the bending of χT\chi T curve to predict the phase transition. As in Figure 9(b), for ϵd<ϵdc\epsilon_{d}<\epsilon_{d}^{c} the curves bend down to zero, implying the local moment is screened Krishna-murthy et al. (1980b, a); Bulla et al. (2008); whereas for ϵd>ϵdc\epsilon_{d}>\epsilon_{d}^{c}, the curves go up to larger values, suggesting the free fluctuation of the local moment. Using ϵdc=0.13197(9)t\epsilon_{d}^{c}=-0.13197(9)t obtained from Binder analysis, the behaviors of χsT\chi_{s}T well above and below ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c} indeed follow our description. At ϵd\epsilon_{d} close to ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c}, it is not easy to determine if this ϵd\epsilon_{d} belongs to the Kondo screening phase based on χT\chi T, unless one conducts simulations at low temperatures. In Fig. 9(b), detailed calculations of χsT\chi_{s}T at T=t/800T=t/800 shows that the critical point is indeed in the range of ϵd\epsilon_{d} from 0.132t-0.132t to 0.131t-0.131t, compatible with the prediction from Binder analysis. However, the calculations of spin susceptibility at low temperature (T=t/600T=t/600 and t/800t/800) are computationally demanding, using χsT\chi_{s}T is thus not an optimized approach to determine the QCP, especially for high-temperature methods such as CT-HYB. Nevertheless, the two distinguished behaviors of χsT\chi_{s}T above and below the critical ϵdc\epsilon_{d}^{c} provide another evidence that the quantum phase transition occurs around this value.

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