Many-body theory of the quantum mirage

Abstract

In recent scanning tunneling microscopy experiments, confinement in an elliptical corral has been used to project the Kondo effect from one focus to the other one. I solve the Anderson model at arbitrary temperatures, for an impurity hybridized with eigenstates of an elliptical corral, each of which has a resonant level width delta. This width is crucial. If delta < 20 meV, the Kondo peak disappears, while if delta > 80 meV, the mirage disappears. For particular conditions, a stronger mirage with the impurity out of the foci is predicted.