Molecular Kondo effect in flat-band lattices

Abstract

The Kondo effect of a single magnetic impurity embedded in the Lieb lattice is studied by the numerical renormalization group. When the band flatness is present in the local density of states at the impurity site, it quenches the participation of all dispersive electrons in the Kondo singlet formation and reduces the many-body Kondo problem to a two-electron molecular Kondo problem. A quantum entanglement of two spins, which is the two-electron molecular analog of the many-body Kondo singlet, is stable at low temperature, and the impurity contributions to thermodynamical and dynamical quantities are qualitatively different from that obtained in the many-body Kondo effect. The conditions for existence of the molecular Kondo effect in narrow band systems are also presented. © 2018 American Physical Society