Consequences of Kondo exchange on quantum spins

When individual quantum spins are placed in close proximity to conducting substrates, the localized spin is coupled to the nearby itinerant conduction electrons via Kondo exchange. In the strong coupling limit this can result in the Kondo effect — the formation of a correlated, many body singlet state — and a resulting renormalization of the density of states near the Fermi energy. However, even when Kondo screening does not occur, Kondo exchange can give rise to a wide variety of other phenomena. In addition to the well known renormalization of the g factor and the finite spin decoherence and relaxation times, Kondo exchange has recently been found to give rise to a newly discovered effect: the renormalization of the single ion magnetic anisotropy. Here we put these apparently different phenomena on equal footing by treating the effect of Kondo exchange perturbatively. In this formalism, the central quantity is ρJ, the product of the density of states at the Fermi energy ρ and the Kondo exchange constant J. We show that perturbation theory correctly describes the experimentally observed exchange induced shifts of the single spin excitation energies, demonstrating that Kondo exchange can be used to tune the effective magnetic anisotropy of a single spin.

This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council UK (EP/D063604/1 and EP/H002367/1); the Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2012-754); the Ministry of Science and Education Spain (FIS2010-21883-C02-01, MAT2010-19236, CONSOLIDER CSD2007-0010 and Programa de Movilidad Postdoctoral); the European Commission FP7 Programme (PER-GA-2009-251791) and the GV grant Prometeo 2012–11.