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# The pseudogap Fermi-Bose Kondo model

(October 12, 2002)

## Abstract

We consider a magnetic impurity coupled to both fermionic quasiparticles with a pseudogap density of states and bosonic spin fluctuations. Using renormalization group and large-$`N`$ calculations we investigate the phase diagram of the resulting Fermi-Bose Kondo model. We show that the Kondo temperature is strongly reduced by low-energy spin fluctuations, and make connections to experiments in cuprate superconductors. Furthermore we derive an exact exponent for the critical behavior of the conduction electron $`T`$ matrix, and propose our findings to be relevant for certain scenarios of local quantum criticality in heavy-fermion metals.

The interplay of quasiparticles and collective low-energy excitations is a central theme in the physics of strongly correlated materials. Impurities have proven to be a powerful probe for investigating the bulk behavior of such systems. A paradigmatic model describing the interaction of impurity degrees of freedom with both quasiparticles and collective spin fluctuations is the so-called Fermi-Bose Kondo model bfk ; bfknew , consisting of a local impurity spin, $`\stackrel{}{S}`$, coupled to spin-$`\frac{1}{2}`$ fermions and spin-1 vector bosons.

The Fermi-Bose Kondo model has recently been analyzed for the case of a metallic fermion density of states (DOS), and a gapless bosonic spectrum representing magnetic order parameter fluctuations at a bulk quantum critical point in $`d`$ dimensions bfk ; bfknew . For $`d<3`$ the model shows a boundary quantum phase transition between a Kondo-screened phase and a bosonic fluctuating phase with universal local spin correlations. Both the critical and the bosonic fluctuating fixed points are characterized by singular thermodynamic properties, connected with local non-Fermi liquid behavior.

The purpose of this Letter is to generalize this analysis to a fermionic bath with a pseudogap DOS, $`\rho _c(\omega )|\omega |^r`$, and to discuss Kondo screening for the case of a finite spin gap, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_s`$, in the bosonic bath. Using renormalization group (RG) methods, we shall establish the phase diagram of the pseudogap Fermi-Bose Kondo model, and furthermore derive an exact relation between the anomalous exponent of the fermion $`T`$ matrix and the exponent of fermionic bath DOS, $`r`$, which holds at any fixed point with a finite coupling between fermions and impurity spin. We shall apply our model to impurity moments in cuprate superconductors, where the fermionic DOS obeys $`r=1`$, and show that Kondo screening is strongly suppressed by collective spin fluctuations, in agreement with NMR experiments.

Recently, the Fermi-Bose Kondo model has been proposed edmft  to describe a “local quantum phase transition” in alloys like $`\mathrm{CeCu}_{6\mathrm{x}}\mathrm{Au}_\mathrm{x}`$ schroder . This modelling is based on an extended dynamical mean-field theory edmft , where a lattice model is mapped onto a self-consistent single-impurity model. Based on our $`T`$ matrix analysis, we will argue that no anomalous power law can occur in the fermion spectrum within such a scenario of local criticality.

Model. The Fermi-Bose Kondo Hamiltonian for a spin-$`\frac{1}{2}`$ impurity can be written as $`H=H_\mathrm{f}+H_\mathrm{b}+H_{\mathrm{imp}}`$, with

$$H_{\mathrm{imp}}=J_K\stackrel{}{S}\stackrel{}{s}_0+\gamma _0\stackrel{}{S}\stackrel{}{\varphi }_0.$$
(1)
Here, $`\stackrel{}{S}`$ denotes the impurity spin operator, and $`H_\mathrm{f}`$ describes a system of free fermions, $`H_\mathrm{f}=_{𝐤\sigma }ϵ_𝐤c_{𝐤\sigma }^{}c_{𝐤\sigma }`$ in standard notation, $`\stackrel{}{s}_0=_{\mathrm{𝐤𝐤}^{}}c_{𝐤\sigma }^{}\stackrel{}{\sigma }_{\sigma \sigma ^{}}c_{𝐤^{}\sigma ^{}}`$ is the conduction band spin operator at the impurity site $`𝐫_0=0`$. The fermionic density of states follows a power law at low energies, $`\rho _c(\omega )=_𝐤\delta (\omega ϵ_𝐤)N_0|\omega |^r`$, which includes the cases of a metal ($`r=0`$) and a $`d`$-wave superconductor ($`r=1`$). In the simplest case, the bosonic bath consists of free vector bosons, $`H_\mathrm{b}=_{𝐪\alpha }\omega _𝐪b_{𝐪\alpha }^{}b_{𝐪\alpha }`$, describing collective spin fluctuations in the host material, with a dispersion $`\omega _𝐪^2=m^2+c^2𝐪^2`$. At zero temperature, the mass $`m`$ coincides with the bulk spin gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }_s`$. A gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }_s>0`$ describes a quantum paramagnet, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_s=0`$ corresponds to a bulk quantum critical point between the paramagnet and an antiferromagnetically ordered phase; the momentum $`𝐪`$ is measured relative to the ordering wavevector $`𝐐`$. The field $`\stackrel{}{\varphi }_0`$ in Eq. (1) represents the local orientation of the antiferromagnetic order parameter, it is given by $`\varphi _{0\alpha }=_𝐪(b_{𝐪\alpha }+b_{𝐪\alpha }^{})/\sqrt{\omega _𝐪/J}`$, where $`J`$ is the bulk exchange constant. It is useful to define a spectral density, $`\rho _\varphi (\omega )`$, of the Bose field $`\varphi `$. At $`T=0`$ and for $`\mathrm{\Delta }_s=0`$, it follows $`\rho _\varphi (\omega )K_0^2\mathrm{sgn}(\omega )|\omega |^{1ϵ}`$, $`K_0^2=J/c^d`$, in $`d=3ϵ`$ dimensions. We note that in dimensions $`d<3`$, boson self-interactions are relevant in the RG sense (in the absence of Landau damping), and we will comment on their effect below. Our analysis will be restricted to the SU(2)-invariant model; the effect of spin anisotropy for $`r=0`$ has been discussed in Ref. bfknew, .

In the absence of the bosonic bath, $`\gamma =0`$, and for $`r=0`$ the model (1) reduces to the well-known Kondo model hewson , which exhibits screening of the magnetic moment below a characteristic (Kondo) temperature, $`T_K`$. The pseudogap generalization, $`r>0`$, shows a zero-temperature phase transition between a free local moment and a screened moment as the Kondo coupling is varied withoff ; bulla ; GBI ; OSPG . On the other hand, in the absence of the fermionic bath, $`J_K=0`$, the Bose-Kondo model describes an impurity moment in an insulating quantum antiferromagnet science .

RG analysis. At the bulk quantum critical point we have $`\mathrm{\Delta }_s=0`$, and both fermionic and bosonic baths obey a power law DOS. The impurity behavior can be analyzed using field-theoretic RG methods, together with an expansion in $`ϵ`$ and $`r`$, similar to Refs. bfk, ; science, ; bfknew, .

We employ a pseudo-fermion representation of the impurity spin $`\frac{1}{2}`$, $`\stackrel{}{S}=f_\sigma ^{}\stackrel{}{\sigma }_{\sigma \sigma ^{}}f_\sigma ^{}`$. Following the standard procedure bgz , we introduce renormalized fields $`f_\sigma =\sqrt{Z_f}f_{R\sigma }`$, $`\varphi _\alpha =\sqrt{Z}\varphi _{R\alpha }`$, and dimensionless couplings $`K_0\gamma _0=\mu ^{ϵ/2}[\stackrel{~}{Z}_\gamma /(Z_f\sqrt{Z})]\gamma `$, $`N_0J_K=\mu ^r(Z_J/Z_f)j`$, where $`\mu `$ is a renormalization energy scale. The derivation of the RG equations has been presented in Ref. bfknew,  for non-interacting $`\stackrel{}{\varphi }`$ bosons ($`Z=1`$ in this case). A similar procedure for the present case with a fermionic pseudogap DOS, using the minimal subtraction scheme, gives the following result for the RG beta functions:

$`\beta (\gamma )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{ϵ\gamma }{2}}+\gamma ^3\gamma ^5+{\displaystyle \frac{j^2\gamma }{2}},`$
$`\beta (j)`$ $`=`$ $`rjj^2+{\displaystyle \frac{j^3}{2}}+j\gamma ^2j\gamma ^4.`$ (2)
The full two-loop result for the case of interacting bosons will be given elsewhere. The equations (2) reduce to the cases of the pseudogap Kondo model for $`\gamma =0`$ withoff  and the metallic Bose-Fermi Kondo model for $`r=0`$ bfknew .

Besides the decoupled (local moment – LM) fixed point, $`\gamma ^{}=j^{}=0`$, the above flow equations have three non-trivial fixed points which are perturbatively accessible:

B-FL: $`\gamma _{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}=\frac{ϵ}{2}+\frac{ϵ^2}{4}`$, $`j^{}=0`$ corresponds to a stable fixed point where the fermionic Kondo coupling is irrelevant, and the coupling between impurity and bosonic bath leads to universal local-moment fluctuations science ;

F-CR: $`j^{}=r+\frac{r^2}{2}`$, $`\gamma ^{}=0`$ is an unstable fixed point controlling the transition between the decoupled (free) moment and the Kondo-screened moment phases; and

FB-CR: $`\gamma _{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}=\frac{ϵ}{2}+\frac{ϵ^2}{8}\frac{ϵr}{2}\frac{r^2}{2}`$, $`j^{}=r+\frac{ϵ}{2}`$ – this is an unstable fixed point between the bosonic fluctuating and the Kondo-screened phases.

For large enough $`j`$, $`\gamma `$ is irrelevant, and the model reduces to the fermionic pseudogap Kondo model which shows strong-coupling phases with screening. Numerical work GBI  has shown that, depending on the value of the exponent $`r`$ and the presence or absence of particle-hole symmetry, two different strong-coupling fixed points exist. As these are not accessible within the present perturbation expansion, we will not distinguish between them, and simply denote the fermionic strong-coupling fixed point, reached for large $`j`$ and small $`\gamma `$, with F-SC. The flow diagram resulting from this discussion is shown in Fig. 1. In the presence of bosonic interactions the RG flow is similar, and the location of the fixed points is modified only at order $`ϵ^2`$. We expect the general structure of the phase diagram, Fig. 1, to be valid for all $`ϵ`$ and $`r`$ values between 0 and 1 – this is e.g. the result of large-$`N`$ calculations (see below); for $`r>\frac{1}{2}`$ particle-hole asymmetry is needed to reach the F-SC fixed point. Finally, a finite host spin gap, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_s>0`$, will cut-off the RG flow of $`\gamma `$ at the scale $`\mathrm{\Delta }_s`$, but there is still a transition as function of $`J_K`$ controlled by the F-CR fixed point.

$`T`$ matrix. An important quantity is the conduction electron $`T`$ matrix, describing the scattering of the $`c`$ electrons off the impurity. It is useful to define a propagator, $`G_T`$, of the composite operator $`T_\sigma =f_\sigma ^{}f_\sigma ^{}c_\sigma ^{}`$, such that the $`T`$ matrix is given by $`T(\omega )=J_K^2G_T(\omega )`$. The diagrams for $`G_T`$ in perturbation theory are shown in Fig. 2. At the RG fixed points, we expect a power law behavior of the $`T`$ matrix spectral density, with an anomalous exponent $`\eta _T`$. (Note that at tree level $`G_T\omega ^r`$ in the present pseudogap problem.) Within the standard scheme bgz  we can obtain the $`G_T`$ renormalization factor $`Z_T`$ in an expansion in $`\gamma `$ and $`j`$ by evaluating the lowest-order diagrams and demanding the resulting expression to be free of poles at energy $`\mu `$. From $`Z_T`$ we obtain a perturbative expression for $`\eta _T`$ according to $`\eta _T=(\mathrm{ln}Z_T)/(\mathrm{ln}\mu )`$, evaluated at $`j=j^{}`$ and $`\gamma =\gamma ^{}`$.

However, it is possible to obtain an exact result for $`\eta _T`$, valid to all orders in perturbation theory. The argument parallels the one for anomalous exponent of the local susceptibility in Refs. bfknew ; science : Inspecting the diagrams in the upper panel of Fig. 2 shows that all are obtained from the first diagram with full $`j`$ vertices and full $`f`$ electron propagators, i.e., there are no additional processes involving, e.g., the conduction electron line. This gives the relation $`Z_T^1=Z_J^2/Z_f^2`$ znote . Using the definition of $`Z_J`$ and taking the derivative w.r.t. $`(\mathrm{ln}\mu )`$ at fixed bare $`J_K`$, we obtain $`0=r+\beta (j)/j\eta _T/2`$. Thus, at any RG fixed point with finite, non-zero $`j^{}`$, we find the exact result

$$\eta _T=2rT(\omega )\frac{1}{\omega ^{r\eta _T}}=\omega ^r.$$
(3)
This result applies to both critical fixed points (F-CR and FB-CR), and relies only on the fact that the $`c`$ electrons do not have a self-interaction being relevant in the RG sense, i.e., it holds for interacting $`\stackrel{}{\varphi }`$ bosons as well.

Remarkably, the critical behavior $`T(\omega )\omega ^r`$ has been numerically found in studies of the pseudogap Kondo model, i.e., at the F-CR fixed point bulla ; MVRB . It is also obtained within a dynamic large-$`N`$ analysis of the same problem OSPG .

Application to cuprate superconductors. In superconducting cuprates it is reasonable to separate the low-energy degrees of freedom into Bogoliubov quasiparticles around the nodes of the $`d`$-wave superconducting order parameter, and antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations around wavevector $`𝐐=(\pi ,\pi )`$, as manifest in the resonance peak in neutron scattering respeak ; momentum conservation prohibits a low-energy coupling between fermionic and bosonic degrees of freedom. A phenomenological description of cuprates in terms of a BCS superconductor plus low-energy collective spin excitations demler  has been successful in describing a number of recent neutron scattering and STM experiments. Therefore, impurity moments in cuprate $`d`$-wave superconductors can be expected to be well described by the pseudogap Fermi-Bose Kondo model, with fermionic DOS exponent $`r=1`$.

Experimentally, signatures of Kondo physics have been observed in cuprates doped e.g. with Zn replacing Cu alloul ; bobroff  – here the non-magnetic Zn induces a quasi-free magnetic moment in its vicinity, which can be related to the properties of the parent Mott insulator fink . In particular, NMR experiments indicate Kondo screening of Zn-induced moments in optimally doped YBa2Cu3O7-δ below the superconducting $`T_c`$, but show that screening is suppressed in underdoped samples bobroff . So far, theoretical analysis has been restricted to either a moment interacting with bulk spin fluctuations science  or a moment interacting with Bogoliubov quasiparticles withoff ; MVRB ; tolya .

Here we propose that the increasing strength of antiferromagnetic fluctuations is the most important contribution to the $`T_K`$ suppression in underdoped cuprates. To this end, we calculate the Kondo temperature in the pseudogap Fermi-Bose Kondo model for a realistic band structure in $`H_\mathrm{f}`$ and a spin fluctuation spectrum in $`H_\mathrm{b}`$ with varying spin gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }_s`$. In modelling the experiment, the important ingredient is that $`\mathrm{\Delta }_s`$ decreases with underdoping, as observed in neutron scattering respeak  – from the RG analysis it is clear that decreasing $`\mathrm{\Delta }_s`$ can drive the impurity from the F-SC to the LM phase. For $`H_\mathrm{f}`$ we use a standard $`d`$-wave BCS model with a gap function $`\mathrm{\Delta }_𝐤=(\mathrm{\Delta }_0/2)(\mathrm{cos}k_x\mathrm{cos}k_y)`$.

To obtain quantitative results, we employ a large-$`N`$ approach were the spin symmetry is generalized from SU(2) to SU($`N`$). The methodology is similar to earlier work hewson ; science ; tolya ; burdin , details will be published elsewhere. While this method has artifacts near the quantum-critical points discussed above, and is not quantitatively accurate, we expect it to capture the qualitative low-$`T`$ physics. The $`T=0`$ results allow to extract a low-energy scale, namely the position of the peak in the $`T`$ matrix, $`k_BT^{}`$, which can be identified with the Kondo temperature up to a numerical factor of order unity tolya ; MVRB . Fig. 3 shows sample results for this quantity as function of the bulk spin gap, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_s`$.

These results indicate that antiferromagnetic fluctuations with a small spin gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }_s`$ are effective in suppressing Kondo screening. We note that an increasing superconducting gap, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$, upon underdoping can have a similar effect in the pseudogap Kondo model MVRB . However, this mechanism is less likely to be universal for all cuprates, as a strong doping dependence of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$ has been observed in Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ but not in YBa2Cu3O7-δ. In contrast, spin fluctuations grow upon underdoping in all cuprates. Therefore, we propose the suppression of Kondo screening as observed in NMR bobroff  to be well explained within the pseudogap Fermi-Bose Kondo model with a doping-dependent host spin gap.

Application to heavy-fermion metals. Motivated by neutron scattering experiments on the heavy-fermion compound $`\mathrm{CeCu}_{6\mathrm{x}}\mathrm{Au}_\mathrm{x}`$ schroder , which indicate momentum-independent critical dynamics at an antiferromagnetic ordering transition, Si et al. proposed a self-consistent version of the Fermi-Bose Kondo model as a candidate to describe such critical behavior within an extended dynamical mean-field approach (EDMFT) edmft . In this scenario, the critical point of the lattice model is mapped onto the critical point (BF-CR) of the impurity model.

The self-consistency within EDMFT has to be achieved for both fermionic and bosonic baths. So far, most discussions assumed $`r=0`$ and focussed primarily on the bosonic part edmft ; bfknew . Here we want to draw attention to the fermionic part as well. Our analysis above shows that a fermionic bath with $`|\omega |^r`$ spectrum leads to a impurity $`T`$ matrix with power-law divergence $`|\omega |^r`$ (3) at the critical point. Now the question is whether DMFT self-consistency in the fermionic bath of a Kondo or Anderson lattice model can be achieved with such a power law. Consider the DMFT self-consistency relation for an Anderson lattice model, where the $`T`$ matrix corresponds to $`V^2G_{\mathrm{imp}}`$ hewson :

$$G^{\mathrm{loc}}(z)\begin{array}{c}=𝑑ϵ\frac{\rho _0^c(ϵ)}{z\epsilon _f\mathrm{\Sigma }^f(z)\frac{V^2}{zϵ}}\hfill \\ =[z\epsilon _f\mathrm{\Delta }(z)\mathrm{\Sigma }^f(z)]^1=G_{\mathrm{imp}}(z)\hfill \end{array}$$
(4)
in standard notation, with $`\rho _0^c(ϵ)`$ the DOS of the bare conduction band of the lattice model, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^f`$ the interacting impurity self-energy, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }(z)`$ the effective hybridization function for the impurity model. Now, $`G_{\mathrm{imp}}\omega ^r`$ implies $`\mathrm{Im}[\mathrm{\Delta }(\omega )+\mathrm{\Sigma }^f(\omega )]|\omega |^r`$. As $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^f`$ is identified with the lattice self-energy within DMFT, we require $`\mathrm{Im}\mathrm{\Sigma }^f<0`$, and both $`\mathrm{Im}\mathrm{\Delta }(\omega )`$ and $`\mathrm{Im}\mathrm{\Sigma }^f(\omega )`$ have to vanish as $`|\omega |^r`$. Using the ansatz $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^f(z)=\epsilon _f+Az^r`$ and expanding $`\rho _0^c(ϵ)`$ around $`ϵ=0`$, the integral in the first line of (4) can be performed in the limit of small $`z`$, and, surprisingly, the coefficient of the leading $`z^r`$ term in $`G^{\mathrm{loc}}(z)`$ vanishes.

Therefore, critical-point self-consistency in the fermionic sector of EDMFT for an Kondo or Anderson model cannot be achieved with an exponent $`r>0`$. If a local critical point within EDMFT exists, it is thus characterized by $`r=0`$, and in this case logarithmic corrections in the $`T`$ matrix are expected, leading to a logarithmic temperature dependence of the resistivity. In addition, we note that any such critical point will be characterized by an extensive ground state entropy (this holds for arbitrary $`r`$), which should have strong signatures in specific heat experiments.

Conclusions. We have analyzed a Fermi-Bose Kondo model, describing an impurity spin coupled to both fermionic quasiparticles with a pseudogap DOS and collective mode bosons, using renormalization group and large-$`N`$ techniques. We have argued our findings to be relevant for cuprate superconductors as well as for scenarios of local criticality in heavy-fermion metals.

We thank R. Bulla, A. Polkovnikov, Th. Pruschke, and S. Sachdev for collaboration on related work and H. Alloul, S. Burdin, A. Rosch, and Q. Si for discussions. This research was supported by the DFG SFB 484.