Disorder-quenched Kondo effect in mesoscopic electronic systems

    Authors

    S. Kettemann;E. R. Mucciolo

    Comments

    Authors: contact us about adding a copy of your work at STARS@ucf.edu

    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Phys. Rev. B

    Keywords

    FERMI-LIQUID BEHAVIOR; WEAK-LOCALIZATION; MAGNETIC-MOMENTS; ALLOYS; TEMPERATURE; STATISTICS; SCATTERING; CROSSOVER; WIRES; METAL; Physics, Condensed Matter

    Abstract

    Nonmagnetic disorder is shown to quench the screening of magnetic moments in metals-the Kondo effect. The probability that a magnetic moment remains free down to zero temperature is found to increase with disorder strength. Experimental consequences for disordered metals are studied. In particular, it is shown that the presence of magnetic impurities with a small Kondo temperature enhances the electron's dephasing rate at low temperatures in comparison to the clean metal case. It is, furthermore, proven that the width of the distribution of Kondo temperatures remains finite in the thermodynamic (infinite volume) limit due to wave-function correlations within an energy interval of order 1/tau, where tau is the elastic scattering time. When time-reversal symmetry is broken either by applying a magnetic field or by increasing the concentration of magnetic impurities, the distribution of Kondo temperatures becomes narrower.

    Journal Title

    Physical Review B

    Volume

    75

    Issue/Number

    18

    Publication Date

    1-1-2007

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    17

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000246890600045

    ISSN

    1098-0121

    Share

    COinS