Two-impurity Kondo physics in a mesoscopic device

ORAL

Abstract

When two quantum impurities are coupled both to each other and to a many-body electron reservoir, the outcome of the competition between inter-impurity (RKKY) and impurity-bath (Kondo) interactions can lead to a dramatic range of electronic behaviors. This two-impurity Kondo (2IK) problem is the basic building block of the Kondo lattice which is suspected to underlie much of the interesting but complex phenomenology seen in the heavy-fermion materials. We realize a mesoscopic model of this building block on a GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure, allowing us to controllably vary the coupling between two quantum dots and their many-body baths, and explore the resulting conductance signature.

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Authors

  • Lucas Peeters

    • Stanford University

  • Andrew Mitchell

    • University College Dublin

  • Vladimir Umansky

    • Braun Center for Sub-Micron Research, Dept. of Condensed Matter Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel 76100
    • Weizmann Institute of Science

  • David Goldhaber-Gordon

    • Stanford University
    • Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA