Local susceptibility and Kondo scaling in the presence of finite bandwidth

Abstract

The Kondo scale TK for impurity systems is expected to guarantee universal scaling of physical quantities. However, in practice, not every definition of TK necessarily supports this notion away from the strict scaling limit. Specifically, this paper addresses the role of finite bandwidth D in the strongly-correlated Kondo regime. For this, various theoretical definitions of TK are analyzed based on the inverse magnetic impurity susceptibility at zero temperature. While conventional definitions in that respect quickly fail to ensure universal Kondo scaling for all D, this paper proposes an altered definition of TK_{sc} that allows universal scaling of dynamical or thermal quantities for a given fixed Hamiltonian. If the scaling is performed with respect to an external parameter which directly enters the Hamiltonian, such as magnetic field, the corresponding TK_{sc;B} for universal scaling differs, yet becomes equivalent to TK_{sc} in the scaling limit. The only requirement for universal scaling in the full Kondo parameter regime with a residual error of less than 1% is a well-defined isolated Kondo feature with TK < 0.01D. By varying D over a wide range relative to the bare energies of the impurity, for example, this allows a smooth transition from the Anderson to the Kondo model.