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# FERMILAB-Pub-02/183-E First Observation of the Doubly Charmed Baryon 𝚵_{𝒄𝒄}⁺

## Abstract

We observe a signal for the doubly charmed baryon $`\mathrm{\Xi }_{cc}^+`$ in the charged decay mode $`\mathrm{\Xi }_{cc}^+\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+K^{}\pi ^+`$ in data from SELEX, the charm hadro-production experiment at Fermilab. We observe an excess of $`15.9`$ events over an expected background of $`6.1\pm 0.5`$ events, a statistical significance of $`6.3\sigma `$. The observed mass of this state is $`3519\pm 1\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$. The Gaussian mass width of this state is $`3\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$, consistent with resolution; its lifetime is less than 33 $`\mathrm{fs}`$ at 90% confidence.

PACS numbers: 14.20.Lq, 13.30.Eg

The addition of the charmed quark to the ($`uds`$) triplet extends the flavor symmetry of the baryon octet and decuplet from SU(3) to SU(4). Even though the large $`m_c`$ breaks the symmetry, SU(4) still provides a good classification scheme for baryons composed of $`uds`$ and $`c`$ . There is strong experimental evidence for all the predicted baryon states which contain zero or one valence charmed quark . In this letter we present the first experimental evidence for one of the six predicted baryon states which contain two valence charmed quarks - the doubly charmed baryons. There have been many predictions of the masses and other properties of these states . The properties of doubly charmed baryons provide a new window into the structure of baryonic matter.

The SELEX experiment uses the Fermilab 600 $`\mathrm{GeV}/c`$ charged hyperon beam to produce charm particles in a set of thin foil targets of Cu or diamond. The three-stage magnetic spectrometer is shown elsewhere . The most important features are: (a) the high-precision, highly redundant, silicon vertex detector that provides an average proper time resolution of 20 $`\mathrm{fs}`$ for single-charm particle decays, (b) a 10 m long Ring-Imaging Cherenkov (RICH) detector that separates $`\pi `$ from K up to 165 $`\mathrm{GeV}/c`$ , and (c) a high-resolution tracking system that has momentum resolution of $`\sigma _P/P<1\%`$ for a 200 $`\mathrm{GeV}/c`$ reconstructed $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+`$.

The experiment selected charm candidate events using an online secondary vertex algorithm. A scintillator trigger demanded an inelastic collision with at least four charged tracks in the interaction scintillators and at least two hits in a positive particle hodoscope after the second analyzing magnet. Event selection in the online filter required full track reconstruction for measured fast tracks ($`p`$15 $`\mathrm{GeV}/c`$). These tracks were extrapolated back into the vertex silicon planes and linked to silicon hits. The beam track was measured in upstream silicon detectors. A full three-dimensional vertex fit was then performed. An event was written to tape if all the fast tracks in the event were inconsistent with having come from a single primary vertex. This filter passed 1/8 of all interaction triggers and had about $`50\%`$ efficiency for otherwise accepted charm decays. The experiment recorded data from $`15.2\times 10^9`$ inelastic interactions and wrote $`1\times 10^9`$ events to tape using both positive and negative beams. $`67\%`$ of events were induced by $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$, $`13\%`$ by $`\pi ^{}`$, and $`18\%`$ by protons.

This analysis began with a sample of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+`$ single-charm baryons decaying to $`pK^{}\pi ^+`$. Candidates were selected with a topological identification of 3-prong positively-charged secondary vertices, requiring a momentum measurement for each track. RICH identification of the proton and kaon was required. Charged tracks with reconstructed momenta which traversed the RICH ($`p\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}22}\mathrm{GeV}/c`$) were identified as protons or kaons if those hypotheses were more likely than the pion hypothesis. The other positive track was identified by the RICH as a pion when possible, otherwise it was assumed to be a pion. The primary vertex was refit using all other found tracks. Details of the selection procedure can be found in . This $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+`$ sample (1630 events) contains the same $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+pK^{}\pi ^+`$ events we used to measure the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+`$ lifetime .

A Cabibbo-allowed decay of a doubly charmed baryon must have a net positive charge and contain a charmed quark, a strange quark and a baryon. We chose to search for decay modes like $`\mathrm{\Xi }_{cc}^+\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+K^{}\pi ^+`$ with an intermediate $`K^{}\pi ^+`$ secondary vertex between the primary vertex and the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+`$ vertex. In this analysis we have incorporated the charm selection techniques developed for single-charm baryon states, as above.

Events were analyzed for evidence of a secondary vertex composed of an opposite-signed pair between the primary and the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+`$ decay point. We used all tracks not assigned to the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+`$ candidate in the search. A new primary vertex was formed from the beam track and tracks assigned to neither the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+`$ nor the $`K^{}\pi ^+`$ vertices. The new secondary vertex had to have an acceptable fit $`\chi ^2`$ and a separation of at least 1$`\sigma `$ from the new primary. The $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+`$$`K^{}\pi ^+`$ transverse momentum with respect to the incident beam direction is required to be in the range $`0.2<p_t[\mathrm{GeV}/c]<2.0`$. These cuts were developed and fixed in previous searches for short-lived single-charm baryon states. We have applied them here without change.

Most tracks from the $`K^{}\pi ^+`$ vertex have insufficient momentum to reach the RICH. Masses were assigned according to topology. For the signal channel negative tracks are assigned the kaon mass and positive tracks the pion mass. As a background check we also kept wrong-sign combinations in which the mass assignments are reversed. A candidate event from the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+K^{}\pi ^+`$ sample is shown in Fig. 1. Further details of the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+`$ reanalysis may be found in Ref. .

In Fig. 2(a) we plot the invariant mass of the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+K^{}\pi ^+`$ system, fixing the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+`$ mass at 2284.9 $`\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$ . The data, plotted in 5 $`\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$ bins, show a large, narrow excess at 3520 $`\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$. This excess is stable for different bin widths and bin centers. Fig. 2(b) shows the wrong-sign invariant mass distribution of the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+K^+\pi ^{}`$ system with the same binning as in (a). There is no significant excess.

In Fig. 2(c) the shaded region from (a) is re-plotted in 2.5 $`\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$ bins and fit with a maximum likelihood technique to a Gaussian plus linear background. The fit has $`\chi ^2`$/dof = 0.45, indicating that the background is linear in this region.

To determine the combinatoric background under the signal peak we exploit the linearity of the background justified by the fit. We define symmetric regions of the mass plot in Fig. 2(c): (i) the signal region ($`3520\pm 5\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$) with $`22`$ events; and (ii) 115 $`\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$ sideband regions above and below the signal region, containing $`16222=140`$ events. We estimate the number of expected background events in the signal region from the sidebands as $`1405/(115)=6.1\pm 0.5`$ events. This determination has a (Gaussian) statistical uncertainty, solely from counting statistics. The single-bin significance of this signal is the excess in the signal region divided by the total uncertainty in the background estimate: $`15.9/\sqrt{(6.1+0.5^2)}=6.3\sigma `$ . The Poisson probability of observing at least this excess, including the Gaussian uncertainty in the background, is $`1.0\times 10^6`$.

Our reconstruction mass window is 3.2-4.3 $`\mathrm{GeV}/c^2`$ with 110 bins of width 10 $`\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$ in this interval. The overall probability of observing an excess at least as large as the one we see anywhere in the search interval is $`1.1\times 10^4`$.

This state has a fit mass of $`3519\pm 1`$ $`\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$. Our expected mass resolution, from a simulation of the decay $`\mathrm{\Xi }_{cc}^+\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+K^{}\pi ^+`$ is $`5`$ $`\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$. We observe a Gaussian width of $`3\pm 1`$ $`\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$, consistent with our simulation. The confidence level for a fit with a Gaussian width fixed at our expected resolution is $`20\%`$. The width we observe is consistent with statistical fluctuations in this small sample.

The wrong-sign mass combination is plotted in Fig. 2(b). Those events show comparable fluctuations to the sidebands of the signal channel and give no evidence for a significant narrow structure. We have investigated all possible permutations of mass assignments for the non-$`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+`$ tracks. The peak at 3520 $`\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$ disappears for any other mass choice, and no other significant structures are observed. Reconstructions with events from the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+`$ mass sidebands produce relatively few entries and no significant structures in the doubly charmed baryon region.

The dependence of the signal significance, as defined above, on several of the selection cuts is shown in Fig. 3. The significance depends strongly only on the $`K^{}\pi ^+`$ vertex separation. The dependence is driven by a large increase in background at small separations and the absence of both signal and background events at large separations. The dependence on the width of the signal region is stable, only decreasing when made wider than the mass resolution. All other cuts have been checked; no significant dependence on any cut has been seen.

A weakly-decaying $`\mathrm{\Xi }_{cc}^+`$ state has two $`c`$ quark decay amplitudes plus a W-exchange amplitude for $`c+ds+u`$. This suggests that its lifetime will be of the order of the $`\mathrm{\Xi }_c^0`$ or shorter, rather than like the long-lived $`\mathrm{\Xi }_c^+`$. For each event we compute the reduced proper time
$`t=(m/p)\times (LL_{min})/c`$. Here $`L`$ is the flight path from the primary vertex to the $`\mathrm{\Xi }_{cc}^+`$ decay point, and $`L_{min}`$ is the minimum flight path for a given event. In this analysis $`L_{min}`$ = $`\sigma `$, the error on the flight path. One can form the likelihood, $`(\tau )`$ = $`_{i=1}^{N_{ev}}`$ P($`t_i,\tau `$) to observe a set $`\{t_i\}`$ of reduced proper time values, given the probability P($`t,\tau `$) for a given lifetime $`\tau `$. P($`t,\tau `$) is the normalized probability of observing a given reduced proper time $`t`$ for a true lifetime $`\tau `$ determined from the SELEX simulation.

Results for the change in likelihood from its maximum value are given in Table I for both the signal region and a sideband region, where combinatorial backgrounds dominate. In both cases the lifetime is much shorter than the single-charm $`\mathrm{\Xi }_c^0`$ lifetime of about 100 $`\mathrm{fs}`$ . Given our single-event resolution of 20 $`\mathrm{fs}`$ , we cannot exclude a prompt decay for the signal events from the likelihood. However, the fact that the significance of the signal increases as the flight path L is increased \[see Fig 3(a)\] suggests that the lifetime is not zero. From these data the upper limit for the $`\mathrm{\Xi }_{cc}^+`$ lifetime at $`90\%`$ confidence is 33 $`\mathrm{fs}`$.

Production characteristics of the 22 signal plus background events are indistinguishable from the single-charm $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+`$ sample.  The mean $`p_t`$ is 1 $`\mathrm{GeV}/c`$ and mean $`x_F`$ 0.33. It is interesting to compare production of the $`\mathrm{\Xi }_{cc}^+`$ state by different beam hadrons. Results for the signal region and sidebands are listed in Table II. One sees that the doubly charmed baryon candidates are produced solely by the baryon beams. The top row gives the fraction of all interactions produced from each of the beams. The proton/$`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ ratio for $`\mathrm{\Xi }_{cc}^+`$ production and for all interactions is the same. One can also ask if there a dependence on the target nucleus. Table III shows that the diamond/copper ratio of the signal events is similar to the sideband events, which in turn behave like single-charm production. Production of $`\mathrm{\Xi }_{cc}^+`$ candidates differs from $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+`$ production only in the absence of meson beam contributions.

The yield of this state is larger than most production models predict . The acceptance for the $`15.9`$ events we observe in this final state, given that we observe a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+`$, is 11%. Using a factor 1.5 from isospin to account for the $`\mathrm{\Xi }_{cc}^+\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+\overline{K}^0\pi ^0`$ mode and Bjorken’s estimate  of 1.6 to include other decay modes with $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+`$ in the final state, we find that $``$20% of the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+`$ in this sample are produced by $`\mathrm{\Xi }_{cc}^+`$ decay.

Our production region has not been probed by other experiments. The large $`x_F`$, small $`p_t`$ region is not amenable to perturbative QCD analysis. Two CERN experiments with $`\pi ^{}`$ beams have reported anomalously large production of events with two charmed particles . However, we do not know of any model calculation that would predict this large hadro-production rate of doubly charmed events. The FOCUS charm photo-production experiment at Fermilab has searched for doubly charmed baryons in their charm samples. They see very few candidate events and no signal peaks . The BELLE B-factory experiment recently reported a very large production ratio for (J/$`\psi c\overline{c})`$/(J/$`\psi )`$ in continuum $`e^+`$ $`e^{}`$ annihilation at 10.8 $`\mathrm{GeV}`$ . The connection to the hadro-production data is not clear.

In summary, we have observed a narrow state at 3520 $`\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$ decaying into $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+K^{}\pi ^+`$, consistent with the weak decay of the doubly charmed baryon $`\mathrm{\Xi }_{cc}^+`$. We report this state as the first observation of a doubly charmed baryon.

The authors are indebted to the staff of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and for invaluable technical support from the staffs of collaborating institutions. This project was supported in part by Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft, Forschung und Technologie, Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACyT), Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, Fondo de Apoyo a la Investigación (UASLP), Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP), the Israel Science Foundation founded by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), the International Science Foundation (ISF), the National Science Foundation (Phy #9602178), NATO (grant CR6.941058-1360/94), the Russian Academy of Science, the Russian Ministry of Science and Technology, the Turkish Scientific and Technological Research Board (TÜBİTAK), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE grant DE-FG02-91ER40664 and DOE contract number DE-AC02-76CHO3000), and the U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF).


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# Soliton Fermi Sea in Models of Ising-coupled Kondo impurities

## Abstract

We study a model of Ising-coupled Kondo impurities that can be applied to quantum dots with capacitance coupling, coupled qubits with an incoherent environment, etc. We show that this model becomes equivalent to a Anderson impurity model with a novel solitonic Fermi sea. We derive exact results at the Toulouse point, and use the flow equation method to extend this analysis away from the Toulouse point for not too large Ising couplings.

Introduction. Kondo physics plays a fundamental role for the low-temperature behavior of a large variety of physical systems like magnetic impurities in metals, heavy-fermion systems, glasses, quantum dots, etc. Its key feature is the quenching of the impurity entropy through nonperturbative screening by many-particle excitations in the associated quantum bath. For magnetic impurities in metals this amounts to the formation of the Kondo singlet between the localized spin and electron–hole excitations in the Fermi sea hewson .

Most of the aspects of single-impurity Kondo physics are now well understood after theoretical tools have been developed that can deal with its intrinsic strong-coupling nature Wilson75 ; Betheansatz . However, in many physical systems the interaction of different impurities, i.e., multi-impurity Kondo physics, is important. For example in heavy-fermion systems the RKKY interaction between different impurity spins is responsible for the competition between local Kondo physics and long-range magnetic order that determines their phase diagram doniach , or in glasses the phonon-mediated coupling between different tunneling centers is known to be important Kassner90 . More recently, related questions about coupled two-level systems have gained much interest in quantum computation, where decoherence due to unwanted couplings among qubits and between qubits and environment should be avoided; on the other hand the intentional coupling of qubits is the key step to performing quantum logic operations.

In the present paper we investigate the case of two Kondo impurities coupled via an $`S_z`$-$`S_z`$ interaction, i.e., an Ising-type coupling. Equivalently, one can think of two two-level systems with transversal coupling, with the experimental realization of coupled flux qubits Mooij99 . Based on the flow equation method Wegner94  we can derive analytical results for this problem by mapping it to a conventional Anderson impurity model. This mapping allows us to derive exact results at the Toulouse point, and controlled approximations in its vicinity. Also we will show how our results can be extended to an arbitrary number of Ising-coupled impurities with an infinite-range interaction.

Coupled impurities or two-level systems have been investigated in a number of papers 2imp ; 2impnrg ; 2impsakai ; 2impcft ; 2impoli , however, most attention has been focussed on the case of SU(2)-symmetric coupling between the impurity spins. We will show that new phenomena arise in the Ising-coupled case due to the two-fold degeneracy of the ground state of the isolated impurity system Andrei . In the context of Kondo impurities, this Ising-like coupling can be thought of as an effective impurity interaction for heavy-fermion systems with an easy axis. Also, Ising coupling appears naturally in quantum dots that are coupled via their mutual capacitance: here the two-level systems are pseudospins representing the number of electrons on the dots, and therefore SU(2) symmetry is broken from the outset Matveev91 ; Matveev95 ; Golden96 .

Model. Let us first formulate the model in the language of Kondo impurities. For simplicity, we will consider a situation where the two impurities are placed in different fermionic baths, yielding the Hamiltonian $`H^\mathrm{K}=H_1^\mathrm{K}+H_2^\mathrm{K}+H_{12}^{\mathrm{Ising}}`$, where $`H_i^\mathrm{K}`$ are the individual Kondo Hamiltonians

$$H_i^\mathrm{K}=\underset{k\alpha }{}ϵ_k^{}c_{k\alpha i}^{}c_{k\alpha i}^{}+J\stackrel{}{S}_i^{}\underset{\alpha \beta }{}c_{0\alpha i}^{}\stackrel{}{\sigma }_{\alpha \beta }^{}c_{0\beta i}^{}$$
(1)
with the fermion creation/annihilation operators $`c_{k\alpha i}^{}`$, $`c_{k\alpha i}^{}`$ with wave vector $`k=2\pi n/L`$, $`n`$, spin index $`\alpha `$ and belonging to Fermi sea #$`i`$. $`c_{0\alpha i}^{},c_{0\alpha i}^{}`$ denote the localized electron state at the impurity sites and $`\stackrel{}{S}_1`$, $`\stackrel{}{S}_2`$ are the two spin-1/2 impurities. We will assume a linear dispersion $`ϵ_k=vk`$ throughout this paper and set $`ϵ_F=0`$. The Ising coupling, which breaks SU(2) symmetry, takes the form

$$H_{12}^{\mathrm{Ising}}=KS_1^zS_2^z.$$
(2)
Note that $`H_{12}^{\mathrm{Ising}}`$ has a doubly degenerate ground state for both signs of $`K`$. The simplifying assumption of two disconnected baths is naturally satisfied for coupled quantum dots; for magnetic impurities in metals it misses the RKKY interaction, which we instead explicitly include by $`H_{12}`$.

The case of SU(2)-symmetric inter-impurity coupling, $`K\stackrel{}{S}_1\stackrel{}{S}_2`$, has been the subject of numerous investigations in the past 2imp ; 2impnrg ; 2impsakai ; 2impcft ; 2impoli . Generically, two different regimes are possible as function of the inter-impurity exchange $`K`$: for large antiferromagnetic $`K`$ the impurities combine to a singlet, and the interaction with the conduction band is weak, whereas for ferromagnetic $`K`$ the impurity spins add up and are Kondo-screened by conduction electrons in the low-temperature limit. In both parameter regimes the ground-state spin will be zero, and there is no quantum phase transition as $`K`$ is varied in the generic situation without particle–hole symmetry (whereas one finds an unstable non-Fermi liquid fixed point in the particle–hole symmetric case) 2impnrg ; 2impsakai ; 2impcft . However, the finite-$`T`$ crossover behavior is significantly different in the two regimes: for large antiferromagnetic $`K`$, the singlet is formed at an energy scale of order $`K`$. In contrast, for ferromagnetic $`K`$, where both spins have to be quenched, a two-stage Kondo effect 2imp ; 2impoli  occurs if the two screening channels have different Kondo coupling leading to different Kondo temperatures: upon lowering the temperature the two spin-1/2 degrees of freedom are “frozen” at two distinct temperature scales.

An alternative starting point for our model of Ising-coupled impurities can be formulated in terms of two two-level systems (spin–boson models), $`H^{\mathrm{SB}}=H_1^{\mathrm{SB}}+H_2^{\mathrm{SB}}+H_{12}^{\mathrm{trans}}`$ with

$`H_i^{\mathrm{SB}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }_i}{2}}\sigma _i^x+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}h_i^{}\sigma _i^z+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{k>0}{}}\lambda _{ki}^{}\sigma _i^z(b_{ki}^{}+b_{ki}^{})`$ (3)
$`+{\displaystyle \underset{k>0}{}}\omega _{ki}^{}b_{ki}^{}b_{ki}^{}`$
and transversal coupling between them, $`H_{12}^{\mathrm{trans}}=\frac{K}{4}\sigma _1^z\sigma _2^z`$. Here $`b_{ki}^{}`$, $`b_{ki}^{}`$ are the bosonic creation/annihilation operators for heat bath #$`i`$. $`\mathrm{\Delta }_i`$ is the bare tunneling matrix element for the two-level system described by $`\sigma _x^i`$, and $`h_i`$ is the asymmetry of its two wells. The impurity properties are completely parametrized by the spectral function $`J_i(\omega )\stackrel{\mathrm{def}}{=}_k\lambda _{ki}^2\delta (\omega \omega _{ki})`$, which we assume to be of Ohmic form, $`J_i(\omega )=2\alpha _i\omega e^{\omega /2\omega _c}`$. One realization of this model is the interaction of tunneling centers in glasses through higher-order phonon exchange Kassner90 . In the context of quantum computation this model arises in studies of decoherence of coupled solid state qubits: the transversal coupling $`K`$ is generated through a superconducting flux transporter, and the heat baths describe the environment leading to decoherence Mooij99 ; Wilhelm02 .

With a polaron transformation $`H^{\mathrm{SB}}`$ can be mapped onto the following Hamiltonian with the same impurity properties, $`H^{\mathrm{bos}}=H_1^{\mathrm{bos}}+H_2^{\mathrm{bos}}+H_{12}^{\mathrm{trans}}`$. Here

$$H_i^{\mathrm{bos}}=\frac{1}{2}h_i^{}\sigma _i^z+g_i(V_i(\lambda _i;0)\sigma _i^{}+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.)+\underset{k>0}{}vkb_{ki}^{}b_{ki}^{}$$
(4)
with coupling constants $`g_i=\mathrm{\Delta }_i/\sqrt{8}`$ and $`\omega _{ki}=vk`$ without loss of generality. $`V_i(\lambda ;x)`$ denote vertex operators

$$V_i(\lambda ;x)\stackrel{\mathrm{def}}{=}\mathrm{exp}\left[\lambda \underset{k>0}{}\frac{1}{\sqrt{k}}e^{ak/2}\left(e^{ikx}b_{ki}^{}e^{ikx}b_{ki}^{}\right)\right]$$

with scaling dimension $`\lambda _i=\sqrt{2\alpha _i}`$ and $`a=v/\omega _c`$.

Eq. (4) is also the bosonized form describing the low-energy properties of the Kondo Hamiltonian (1) with $`b_{ki}^{}`$, $`b_{ki}^{}`$ describing the spin-density excitations in Fermi sea #$`i`$, $`a=\rho _Fv`$, $`\lambda _i=\sqrt{2}(\rho _FJ)/\sqrt{8\pi ^2}`$, $`h_i=0`$, and $`g_i=J/2`$. In the sequel we will use (4) as the unified starting point of our analysis and use the terminology of Kondo impurity problems. Notice that $`H_{12}^{\mathrm{trans}}`$ remained unaffected by the above unitary transformation.

Toulouse point. In a first step to study the phase diagram of Ising-coupled Kondo impurities we investigate the special Toulouse point Toulouse69  $`\lambda _i=1`$ ($`\alpha _i=1/2`$), where we will show that the problem can be solved exactly. Since the vertex operators $`V_i(\pm 1;x)`$ obey fermionic anticommutation relations, the Hamiltonian of an individual Kondo impurity, $`H_i^{\mathrm{bos}}`$, can be refermionized, leading to a resonant level model of spinless fermions for each of the two impurities Delft98 . The Ising coupling transforms into a density–density interaction, and the full model $`H^{\mathrm{bos}}`$ thus reads

$`H`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{ki}{}}vke_{ki}^{}e_{ki}^{}+{\displaystyle \underset{ki}{}}V_{ki}(e_{ki}^{}d_i^{}+d_i^{}e_{ki}^{})`$ (5)
$`+ϵ_d(n_{d1}+n_{d2}1)+{\displaystyle \frac{h_{\mathrm{loc}}}{2}}(n_{d1}n_{d2})`$
$`+K\left(n_{d1}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\right)\left(n_{d2}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\right)`$
with the representation $`\sigma _i^+=d_i^{}`$, $`\sigma _i^{}=d_i^{}`$, $`\sigma _i^z=2(d_i^{}d_i^{}1/2)`$, $`n_{di}=d_i^{}d_i^{}`$, $`V_{ki}=g_i\sqrt{2\pi a/L}`$, $`ϵ_d=(h_1+h_2)/2`$, $`h_{\mathrm{loc}}=h_1h_2`$, and

$$e_{ki}^{}\stackrel{\mathrm{def}}{=}\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi aL}}𝑑xe^{ikx}V_i(1;x).$$
(6)
Eq. (5) represents one of the main results of our paper: At the Toulouse point the problem of two Ising-coupled Kondo impurities maps onto an Anderson impurity model (AIM) with Coulomb interaction $`K`$. The Fermi sea of this effective AIM consists of the soliton excitations (6) constructed from spin-density excitations around the impurities. The index $`i=1,2`$, originally labelling the two impurities and their baths, now plays the role of a pseudospin in this effective AIM. The impurity properties are completely described by the hybridization function $`\mathrm{\Delta }_i(ϵ)\stackrel{\mathrm{def}}{=}_kV_{ki}^2\delta (ϵϵ_k)`$, which is constant in the above model $`\mathrm{\Delta }_i(ϵ)=\rho _Fg_i^2`$. With this mapping the original problem (at the Toulouse point) is essentially solved since (5) is well-understood using various methods like, e.g., Wilson’s numerical renormalization group Wilson75 , and for the special case of both impurity sites being equal ($`V_{ki}=V`$ and $`h_{\mathrm{loc}}=0`$) is even integrable with exact Bethe ansatz results Betheansatz .

This integrable case allows us to study in detail the competition between local Kondo screening and the Ising interaction. From the Bethe ansatz solution one knows that the ground state of the Anderson impurity model is always unique with no phase transition as a function of $`K`$. For simplicity we will first analyze the problem with no local magnetic fields $`h_1=h_2=0`$ ($`ϵ_d=0`$). For large positive $`K\mathrm{\Delta }(0)`$ (large antiferromagnetic Ising interaction) one finds $`n_{d1}+n_{d2}1`$ ($`S_1^z+S_2^z0`$): the impurity site of the effective Anderson model is singly occupied. There are two degenerate impurity configurations, namely $``$ and $``$. However, these two configurations get mixed by many-particle excitations in the effective Fermi sea. Thus, the pseudospin is screened below a new collective Kondo scale $`T_K^{\mathrm{coll}}\mathrm{exp}(|K|/8\mathrm{\Delta }(0))`$, and the ground state is a singlet. On reducing the temperature the impurity entropy is quenched in two stages (Fig. 1): for $`TK`$ one finds $`S_{\mathrm{imp}}=\mathrm{ln}4`$, which is reduced to the two singlet configurations ($`S_{\mathrm{imp}}=\mathrm{ln}2`$) for temperatures of order $`K`$, and finally quenched completely below the collective Kondo temperature $`T_K^{\mathrm{coll}}`$. Note that this type of two-stage screening is completely different from the one mentioned in the introduction 2imp , which occurs if the two conventional Kondo screening channels have different strengths.

For large negative $`K`$ (large ferromagnetic Ising interaction) the situation is related to the antiferromagnetic case by particle–hole symmetry: one finds $`|S_1^z+S_2^z|1`$, i.e., the two impurity states being degenerate in the absence of the baths are $``$ and $``$. The screening of the associated pseudospin appears at the same collective Kondo scale as above.

For smaller $`|K|`$, namely of order $`\mathrm{\Delta }(0)`$ or below, the only relevant temperature scale is set by $`\mathrm{\Delta }(0)`$: the two impurities do not couple into an inter-impurity doublet since they are screened individually by their respective Kondo interaction (1) at temperatures above $`K`$. Notice that at the Toulouse point $`\mathrm{\Delta }(0)`$ can be identified with the Kondo temperature $`T_K^i`$ of the individual impurity $`i`$, below which screening occurs.

Going away from the integrable case the effective Anderson impurity model (5) still displays the same crossover behavior between the various limiting cases as a function of $`K`$, provided that $`K`$ fulfills Eq. (10) below. In general the above crossover temperatures then depend on $`ϵ_d`$ and the local magnetic field $`h_{\mathrm{loc}}`$.

Flow equation solution. Next we generalize the exact results at the Toulouse point to general couplings using the flow equation diagonalization of the Kondo Hamiltonian HofstetterKehrein\_01 . In Ref. HofstetterKehrein\_01,  a continuous sequence of unitary transformations was constructed that led to a systematic approximation scheme which becomes exact at the Toulouse point and yields a controlled approximation away from it. This means we know a unitary transformation $`U_i`$ that diagonalizes the Hamiltonian (4) up to higher-order terms that do not affect the universal properties. It was shown that $`\stackrel{~}{H}_i^{\mathrm{bos}}=U_i^{}H_i^{\mathrm{bos}}U_i^{}`$ takes the form

$`\stackrel{~}{H}_i^{\mathrm{bos}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{k>0}{}}vkb_{ki}^{}b_{ki}^{}+{\displaystyle \frac{h_i}{2}}\stackrel{~}{\sigma }_i^z`$
$`+{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}\omega _k[V(\lambda _i(k);k),V(\lambda _i(k);k)],`$
where the third term consists of Fourier transformed vertex operators with a scaling dimension $`\lambda _i(k)`$ that depends on the energy scale. The unitarily transformed operator $`\stackrel{~}{\sigma }_i^z=U_i^{}\sigma _i^zU_i^{}`$ is given by HofstetterKehrein\_01

$$\stackrel{~}{\sigma }_i^z=\underset{k,k^{}}{}\alpha _k\alpha _k^{}[V(\lambda _i(k);k),V(\lambda _i(k^{});k^{})]$$
(8)
with certain coefficients $`\alpha _k`$. We now make use of this single-impurity flow equation diagonalization by applying the combined unitary transformation $`U=U_1U_2`$ on the coupled system

$`\stackrel{~}{H}`$ $`=`$ $`U_1^{}U_2^{}HU_2^{}U_1^{}`$
$`=`$ $`\stackrel{~}{H}_1^{\mathrm{bos}}+\stackrel{~}{H}_2^{\mathrm{bos}}+{\displaystyle \frac{K}{4}}\stackrel{~}{\sigma }_1^z\stackrel{~}{\sigma }_2^z.`$
This procedure is summarized in Fig. 2. In the sequel we will only be interested in the strong-coupling regime of the single-impurity problems $`\lambda _i^22`$ implying a flow to the Toulouse point in the infrared limit $`\lambda _i(k)\stackrel{k0}{}1`$. We now approximate (Soliton Fermi Sea in Models of Ising-coupled Kondo impurities) by setting $`\lambda _i(k)=1k`$, i.e. by using fermions instead of the vertex operators with a running scaling dimension. This approximation becomes exact in the low-energy limit, where many-particle pseudospin excitations are most important.

Using this approximation (Soliton Fermi Sea in Models of Ising-coupled Kondo impurities) can be refermionized leading to a Hamiltonian that has the same structure (5) like at the Toulouse point, except with a non-constant hybridization function $`\mathrm{\Delta }_i(ϵ)`$ that depends on the unitary transformation $`U_i`$. One can show $`\mathrm{\Delta }_i(0)T_K^i`$, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_i(ϵ)\rho _Fg_i^2|\rho _Fϵ|^{\lambda _i^21}`$ for $`|ϵ|T_K^i`$, with a smooth crossover in between Slezak02 . Here $`T_K^i`$ is the individual Kondo scale of one impurity without Ising coupling to the other impurity.

The above analysis neglects the feedback of one impurity on the other. The accuracy of the approximation within the flow equation transformation $`U_i`$ decreases away from the Toulouse point. Therefore the error in the transformation of $`\stackrel{~}{\sigma }_i^z`$ is proportional to the distance to the Toulouse point $`(\lambda 1)`$, leading to an error in the transformation of the interaction between the two Kondo impurities that is proportional to $`|K(\lambda 1)|`$. When this energy scale becomes comparable to the energy scale of the individual Kondo Hamiltonians our approximations are no longer reliable, which means that we can only study the phase diagram for Ising couplings with

$$|K|\frac{\mathrm{min}_iT_K^i}{|\lambda 1|}.$$
(10)
For not too large Ising couplings $`K`$ that fulfill this condition we can trust the mapping to the Anderson impurity model with Coulomb interaction $`U=K`$, and carry over our analysis from the Toulouse point.

For larger couplings $`K`$ the flow equation transformation needs to be extended to higher orders. A careful analysis shows that a quantum phase transition can occur when the condition (10) is violated previous\_version . The Anderson model becomes supplemented by a density–density interaction between the impurity orbital and the first conduction electron site. This interaction maps onto a ferromagnetic spin–spin interaction when charge fluctuations are frozen out for large $`K`$; this ferromagnetic interaction can in turn destroy the screening of the pseudospin and lead to a phase with a doubly degenerate ground state. For a full account of this analysis and other approaches to the model of Ising-coupled Kondo impurities we refer to Ref. Garstetal, .

$`N`$ impurities. The above mappings can be generalized to the case of $`N`$ impurities with infinite-range Ising interaction

$$H=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}H_i^K+K\underset{i<j}{}S_i^zS_j^z.$$
(11)
For simplicity we will only look at the Toulouse point (also $`h_i=0i`$), though the above flow equation analysis of the Kondo regime can be carried over as well. After refermionization one finds an $`N`$-channel Anderson impurity model describing the SU($`N`$) pseudospin fluctuations:

$`H`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{ki}{}}vke_{ki}^{}e_{ki}^{}+{\displaystyle \underset{ki}{}}V_{ki}(e_{ki}^{}d_i^{}+d_i^{}e_{ki}^{})`$ (12)
$`+K{\displaystyle \underset{i<j}{}}\left(n_{di}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\right)\left(n_{dj}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\right).`$
Again the crossover between ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic coupling $`K`$ is known to be smooth. For the special case of large positive $`K`$ – this situation corresponds to a fully frustrated Ising model coupled to dissipative baths – one can perform a generalized Schrieffer–Wolff transformation to an SU($`N`$) Kondo model that describes the quenching of the pseudospin fluctuations below a collective Kondo scale $`T_K^{\mathrm{coll}}`$. Away from the Toulouse point we find the same picture as long as the condition (10) is fulfilled.

Conclusions. Summing up, we have investigated the case of Ising-coupled Kondo impurities. At the Toulouse point we could map this model exactly to an Anderson impurity model with a Fermi sea that consists of fermionic soliton excitations. The Ising coupling leads to two degenerate ground states of the isolated double-impurity system; this pseudospin degree of freedom is screened below a collective Kondo scale $`T_K^{\mathrm{coll}}`$ through soliton excitations. This piece of physics describing many-particle excitations of solitons (many-many-particle excitations) is absent for an SU(2)-symmetric inter-impurity coupling. Using the novel flow equation method Wegner94 ; HofstetterKehrein\_01  we could extend this analysis from the Toulouse point for not too large Ising couplings $`K`$ that obey Eq. (10).

This work has been supported by SFB 484 of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). We acknowledge valuable discussions with N. Andrei, M. Garst, A. Schiller, Th. Pruschke, and A. Rosch.