The coupling between localized magnetic moments and itinerant electrons presents a plethora of interesting physics. The low-energy physics of some quantum impurity systems can be described using conformal field theory (CFT). In this paper, the connection between quantum impurity models and CFT is further strengthened as we construct a class of exactly solvable models with ground states given by CFT correlators. The method developed here is completely analytical and can be applied to fermions with an arbitrary number of colors and multiple impurities. Numerical calculations are performed to characterize certain aspects of our models for which we do not have analytical results.
A brief review is given of a new method for studying the critical behavior of quantum impurity problems, based on conformal field theory techniques, which I developed with Andreas Ludwig. Some results on the overscreened Kondo problem are reviewed. It is shown that the simple open and periodic fixed points, which occur in quantum spin chain impurity models, are related to each other by fusion.
We explore the Kondo effect incorporating the localized impurity transforming under generic symmetry group $G$, that we call the $G$-Kondo effect. We derive the one-dimensional effective model coupled with the impurity, and studied the thermodynamic properties based on the boundary conformal field theory approach. We in particular study the impurity entropy at the conformal fixed point, and the low temperature behavior of the specific heat and the susceptibility. We also consider the Wilson ratio based on these results, and mention the case with exceptional group symmetry.
University of California, Santa Barbara（加州大学圣塔芭芭拉分校）；Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics（理论物理前沿研究所）；University of Waterloo（滑铁卢大学）；C. N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics, Stony Brook University（石溪大学杨振宁理论物理研究所）
Numerical renormalization group and conformal field theory work indicate that the two impurity Kondo Hamiltonian has a non-Fermi liquid critical point separating the Kondo-screening phase from the inter-impurity singlet phase when particle-hole (P-H) symmetry is maintained. We clarify the circumstances under which this critical point occurs, pointing out that there are two types of P-H symmetry. Only one of them guarantees the occurance of the critical point. Much of the previous numerical work was done on models with the other type of P-H symmetry. We analyse this critical point using the bou…
We revisit the $(1+1)$ dimensional field theoretical model, which describes the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL), interacting with a static impurity at the origin of the half line. Applying the Fermi-Bose equivalence and finite conformal transformations only, we map the model onto the Schmid model. Some details of the bosonization procedure have been given. The critical line and the phase diagram of the model follow from the renormalization group analysis of the Schmid model. The obtained critical line of the model is a hyperbola in the parameter space of the two couplings of the TLL.
These are lectures presented at the Les Houches Summer School ``Topology and Geometry in Physics'', July 1998. They provide a simple introduction to non perturbative methods of field theory in 1+1 dimensions, and their application to the study of strongly correlated condensed matter problems - in particular quantum impurity problems. The level is moderately advanced, and takes the student all the way to the most recent progress in the field: many exercises and additional references are provided. In the first part, I give a sketchy introduction to conformal field theory. I then explain how boun…
We present a new formulation of the theory of an arbitrary quantum impurity in an antiferromagnet, using the O(3) non-linear sigma model. We obtain the low temperature expansion for the impurity spin susceptibilities of antiferromagnets with magnetic long-range order in the ground state. We also consider the bulk quantum phase transition in d=2 to the gapped paramagnet (d is the spatial dimension): the impurity is described solely by a topological Berry phase term which is an exactly marginal perturbation to the critical theory. The physical properties of the quantum impurity near criticality …
We study non-perturbative aspects of QCD Kondo effect, which has been recently proposed for the finite density and strong magnetic field systems, using conformal field theory describing the low energy physics near the IR fixed point. We clarify the symmetry class of QCD Kondo effect both for the finite density and magnetic field systems, and show how the IR fixed point is non-perturbatively characterized by the boundary condition, which incorporates the impurity effect in Kondo problem. We also obtain the low temperature behavior of several quantities of QCD Kondo effect in the vicinity of the…
A general framework is proposed to tackle analytically local quantum quenches in integrable impurity systems, combining a mapping onto a boundary problem with the form factor approach to boundary-condition-changing operators introduced in Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 4370 (1998). We discuss how to compute exactly two central quantities of interest: the Loschmidt echo and the distribution of the work done during the quantum quench. Our results display an interesting crossover physics characterized by the energy scale T_b of the impurity corresponding to the Kondo temperature. We discuss in detail the n…
We establish the existence of an exact non-perturbative self-duality in a variety of quantum impurity problems, including the Luttinger liquid or quantum wire with impurity. The former is realized in the fractional quantum Hall effect, where the duality interchanges electrons with Laughlin quasiparticles. We discuss the mathematical structure underlying this property, which bears an intriguing resemblance with the work of Seiberg and Witten on supersymmetric non-abelian gauge theory.
In the context of the Penrose/BMN limit of the AdS/CFT correspondence, we consider four-impurity BMN operators in Yang-Mills theory, and demonstrate explicitly their correspondence to four-oscillator states in string theory. Using the dilatation operator on the gauge-theory side of the correspondence, we calculate matrix elements between four-impurity states. Since conformal dimensions of gauge-theory operators correspond to light-cone energies of string states, these matrix elements may be compared with the string-theory light-cone Hamiltonian matrix elements calculated in the plane-wave back…
Recently, a new approach, based on boundary conformal field theory, has been applied to a variety of quantum impurity problems in condensed matter and particle physics. A particularly enlightening example is the multi-channel Kondo problem. In this review some earlier approaches to the Kondo problem are discussed, the needed material on boundary conformal field theory is developed and then this new method is applied to the multi-channel Kondo problem.
We introduce an integrable impurity model in which both electrons and impurity have spin and flavour degrees of freedom. This model is a generalization of the multi-channel Kondo model and closely related with resonant tunneling through quantum dot. The Hamiltonian is exactly diagonalized by means of the Bethe ansatz.
We set up a scattering experiment of matter against an impurity which separates two generic one-dimensional critical quantum systems. We compute the flux of reflected and transmitted energy, thus defining a precise measure of the transparency of the interface between the related two-dimensional conformal field theories. If the largest symmetry algebra is Virasoro, we find that the reflection and transmission coefficients are independent of the details of the initial state, and are fixed in terms of the central charges and of the two-point function of the displacement operator. The situation is…
Boundary conformal field theory (BCFT) is simply the study of conformal field theory (CFT) in domains with a boundary. It gains its significance because, in some ways, it is mathematically simpler: the algebraic and geometric structures of CFT appear in a more straightforward manner; and because it has important applications: in string theory in the physics of open strings and D-branes, and in condensed matter physics in boundary critical behavior and quantum impurity models. In this article, however, I describe the basic ideas from the point of view of quantum field theory, without regard to …
The exact finite-size spectra for several quantum impurity models related to the Kondo problem are obtained from the Bethe ansatz solutions. Using the finite-size scaling in boundary conformal field theory, we determine various surface critical exponents from the exact spectrum, which accord with those obtained by Affleck and Ludwig with Kac-Moody fusion rules. Some applications to critical phenomena observed in connection with the orthogonality catastrophe are also discussed.
The problem of a non-relativistic electron in the presence of a uniform electromagnetic field and of one impurity, described by means of an Aharonov-Bohm point-like vortex, is studied. The exact solution is found and the quantum Hall's conductance turns out to be the same as in the impurity-free case. This exactly solvable model seems to give indications, concerning the possible microscopic mechanisms underlying the integer quantum Hall effect, which sensibly deviate from some proposals available in the literature.
We develop in this letter an analytical approach using form- factors to compute time dependent correlations in integrable quantum impurity problems. As an example, we obtain for the first time the frequency dependent conductivity $G(ω)$ for the tunneling between the edges in the $ν=1/3$ fractional quantum Hall effect, and the spectrum $S(w)$ of the spin-spin correlation in the anisotropic Kondo model and equivalently in the double well system of dissipative quantum mechanics, both at vanishing temperature.
We present a construction of non-equilibrium steady states within conformal field theory. These states sustain energy flows between two quantum systems, initially prepared at different temperatures, whose dynamical properties are represented by two, possibly different, conformal field theories connected through an impurity. This construction relies on a real time formulation of conformal defect dynamics based on a field scattering picture parallelizing - but yet different from - the Euclidean formulation. We present the basic characteristics of this formulation and give an algebraic constructi…
We compute the DC conductance for a homogeneous sine-Gordon model and an impurity system of Luttinger liquid type by means of the thermodynamic Bethe ansatz and standard potential scattering theory. We demonstrate that unstable particles and resonances in impurity systems lead to a sharp increase of the conductance as a function of the temperature, which is characterized by the Breit-Wigner formula.
These are notes of lectures given at The NATO Advanced Study Institute/EC Summer School on ``New Theoretical Approaches to Strongly Correlated Systems'' (Newton Institute, April 2000). They are a sequel to the notes I wrote two years ago for the Summer School ``Topological Aspects of Low Dimensional Systems'', (Les Houches, July 1998). In this second part, I review the form-factors technique and its extension to massless quantum field theories. I then discuss the calculation of correlators in integrable quantum impurity problems, with special emphasis on point contact tunneling in the fraction…
Within a one particle approximation of the Dirac equation we investigate a defect system in a quantum wire. We demonstrate that by minimally coupling a laser field of frequency omega to such an impurity system, one may generate harmonics of multiples of the driving frequency. In a multiple defect system one may employ the distance between the defects in order to tune the cut-off frequency.
We establish the exact solution of the nonlinear Schrodinger equation with a delta-function impurity, representing a point-like defect which reflects and transmits. We solve the problem both at the classical and the second quantized levels. In the quantum case the Zamolodchikov-Faddeev algebra, familiar from the case without impurities, is substituted by the recently discovered reflection-transmission (RT) algebra, which captures both particle-particle and particle-impurity interactions. The off-shell quantum solution is expressed in terms of the generators of the RT algebra and the exact scat…
