Anderson impurity model

The Anderson impurity model, named after Philip Warren Anderson, is a Hamiltonian that is used to describe magnetic impurities embedded in metals. It is often applied to the description of Kondo effect-type problems, such as heavy fermion systems and Kondo insulators. In its simplest form, the model contains a term describing the kinetic energy of the conduction electrons, a two-level term with an on-site Coulomb repulsion that models the impurity energy levels, and a hybridization term that couples conduction and impurity orbitals. For a single impurity, the Hamiltonian takes the form

${\displaystyle H=\sum _{\sigma }\epsilon _{f}f_{\sigma }^{\dagger }f_{\sigma }+\sum _{\langle j,j^{\prime }\rangle \sigma }t_{jj'}c_{j\sigma }^{\dagger }c_{j'\sigma }+\sum _{j,\sigma }(V_{j}f_{\sigma }^{\dagger }c_{j\sigma }+V_{j}^{*}c_{j\sigma }^{\dagger }f_{\sigma })+Uf_{\uparrow }^{\dagger }f_{\uparrow }f_{\downarrow }^{\dagger }f_{\downarrow }}$,

where the ${\displaystyle f}$ operator corresponds to the annihilation operator of an impurity, and ${\displaystyle c}$ corresponds to a conduction electron annihilation operator, and ${\displaystyle \sigma }$ labels the spin. The on–site Coulomb repulsion is ${\displaystyle U}$, which is usually the dominant energy scale, and ${\displaystyle t_{jj'}}$ is the hopping strength from site ${\displaystyle j}$ to site ${\displaystyle j'}$. A significant feature of this model is the hybridization term ${\displaystyle V}$, which allows the ${\displaystyle f}$ electrons in heavy fermion systems to become mobile, although they are separated by a distance greater than the Hill limit.

For heavy-fermion systems, a lattice of impurities is described by the periodic Anderson model:

${\displaystyle H=\sum _{j\sigma }\epsilon _{f}f_{j\sigma }^{\dagger }f_{j\sigma }+\sum _{\langle j,j^{\prime }\rangle \sigma }t_{jj'}c_{j\sigma }^{\dagger }c_{j'\sigma }+\sum _{j,\sigma }(V_{j}f_{j\sigma }^{\dagger }c_{j\sigma }+V_{j}^{*}c_{j\sigma }^{\dagger }f_{j\sigma })+U\sum _{j}f_{j\uparrow }^{\dagger }f_{j\uparrow }f_{j\downarrow }^{\dagger }f_{j\downarrow }}$

There are other variants of the Anderson model, for instance the SU(4) Anderson model, which is used to describe impurities which have an orbital, as well as a spin, degree of freedom. This is relevant in carbon nanotube quantum dot systems. The SU(4) Anderson model Hamiltonian is

${\displaystyle H=\sum _{i\sigma }\epsilon _{f}f_{i\sigma }^{\dagger }f_{i\sigma }+\sum _{<j,j'>\sigma }t_{ijj'}c_{ij\sigma }^{\dagger }c_{ij'\sigma }+\sum _{ij,\sigma }(V_{j}f_{i\sigma }^{\dagger }c_{ij\sigma }+V_{j}^{*}c_{ij\sigma }^{\dagger }f_{i\sigma })+\sum _{i\sigma ,i'\sigma '}{\frac {U}{2}}n_{i\sigma }n_{i'\sigma '}}$

where ${\displaystyle i}$ and ${\displaystyle i'}$ label the orbital degree of freedom (which can take one of two values), and ${\displaystyle n}$ represents a number operator.

See also

• Kondo effect
• Kondo model
• Anderson localization

References

• Anderson, P. W. (1961). "Localized Magnetic States in Metals". Phys. Rev. 124 (1): 41–53. Bibcode:1961PhRv..124...41A. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.124.41.
• Hewson, A. C. (1993). The Kondo Problem to Heavy Fermions. New York: Cambridge University Press.