Global phase diagram of a Kondo Hund impurity model and the destruction of Fermi-liquid theory

ORAL

Abstract

In many correlated materials, notably the Hund metals, the Landau Fermi-liquid coherence scale T FL is found to be very small. In this Letter, we interpret its smallness in terms of proximity to quantum critical points (QCPs): We use the numerical renormalization group (NRG) to compute the global phase diagram of the simplest three-channel spin-orbital Kondo impurity model capturing the essential physics of Hund metals. When the spin or spin-orbital Kondo couplings are tuned into the ferromagnetic regimes, we find quantum phase transitions to a singular Fermi-liquid or a novel non-Fermi-liquid phase, signalling the existence of QCPs, while T FL is suppressed to zero. The new non-Fermi-liquid phase shows frustrated behavior involving alternating overscreenings in spin and orbital sectors, with universal power laws in the spin (ω-1/5), orbital (ω1/5) and spin-orbital (ω1) dynamical susceptibilities. These power laws, and the NRG eigenlevel spectra, can be fully understood using conformal field theory arguments, which also clarify the nature of the NFL phase.

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Presenters

  • Yilin Wang

    • Brookhaven National Laboratory

Authors

  • Yilin Wang

    • Brookhaven National Laboratory
  • Elias Walter

    • Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
  • Seung-Sup Lee

    • Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
  • Katharina M Stadler

    • Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
  • Jan Von Delft

    • Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
    • Physics Department, Arnold Sommerfeld Center for Theoretical Physics, and Center for NanoScience, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität
  • Andreas Weichselbaum

    • Brookhaven National Laboratory
    • Department of Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science, Brookhaven National Laboratory
  • Gabriel Kotliar

    • Rutgers University, New Brunswick
    • Rutgers University
    • Condensed Matter Physics, Brookhaven National Laboratory
    • Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, New Brunswick
    • Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University