Coupling of conduction electrons to two-level systems formed by hydrogen: a scattering approach.

An effective Hamiltonian for a two-level system (TLS) which could model the interaction between a tunneling proton and the conduction electrons of a metal is investigated in a comparative way. In the conventional first-order Born approximation with plane waves, and for small-distance displacement of the tunneling particle, a simple correlation between the atomic motion and angular momentum change of the scattering electron is deduced. For such a displacement, and within a distorted wave Born approximation for initial and final states, the change in the scattering amplitude is expressed via bounded trigonometric functions of the corresponding difference of scattering phase shifts. The numerical value of this amplitude change is analyzed in the framework of a self-consistent screening description for an impurity embedding in a paramagnetic electron gas. The coupling thus obtained of the tunneling proton to a homogeneous electron gas is too weak to be in the range required for realization of the two-channel Kondo effect.

Role of surface anisotropy for magnetic impurities in electron dephasing and energy relaxation and their size effect.

Recently the electron dephasing and energy relaxation due to different magnetic impurities have been extensively investigated experimentally in thin wires, and in this Letter these quantities are theoretically studied. It was shown earlier that a magnetic impurity in a metallic host with strong spin-orbit interaction experiences a surface anisotropy of the form H=K(d)(nS)(2) which causes size effects for impurities with integer spin. Here we show that the dephasing and the energy relaxation are influenced by the surface anisotropy in very different ways for integer spin having a singlet ground state. That must result also in strong size effects and may resolve the puzzle between the concentrations estimated from the two kinds of experiments.

Nonequilibrium quasiparticle distribution induced by Kondo defects.

It is shown that in resistive nanowires out of equilibrium containing either single- or two-channel Kondo impurities the distribution function f(E,U) obeys scaling behavior in terms of the quasiparticle energy E and the bias voltage U. The numerically calculated f(E,U) curves explain quantitatively recent experiments on Cu and Au nanowires. The systematics of the impurity concentration c(imp) extracted from the comparison between theory and results on various Cu and Au samples strongly suggests that in these systems the scaling arises from magnetic Kondo impurities.

Theory of the fano resonance in the STM tunneling density of states due to a single kondo impurity

The conduction electron density of states nearby single magnetic impurities, as measured recently by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), is calculated, taking into account tunneling into conduction electron states only. The Kondo effect induces a narrow Fano resonance in the conduction electron density of states. The line shape varies with the distance between STM tip and impurity, in qualitative agreement with experiments, but is very sensitive to details of the band structure. For a Co impurity the experimentally observed width and shift of the Kondo resonance are in accordance with those obtained from a combination of band structure and strongly correlated calculations.