The Kondo effect in the presence of the Rashba spin-orbit interaction

Abstract

We study the temperature scale of the Kondo screening of a magnetic impurity which hybridizes with a two-dimensional electron gas in the presence of the Rashba spin-orbit interaction. The problem is mapped to an effective single-band impurity model with a hybridization function having an inverse-square-root divergence at the bottom of the band. We study the effect of this divergence on the Kondo screening. The problem is solved numerically without further approximations using the numerical renormalization group technique. We find that the Rashba interaction leads to a small variation of the Kondo temperature (increase or decrease) which depends on the values of the impurity parameters.