Orbital Kondo behavior from dynamical structural defects

Abstract

The interaction between an atom moving in a model double-well potential and the conduction electrons is treated using renormalization group methods in next-to-leading logarithmic order. A large number of excited states is taken into account and the Kondo temperature $T_K$ is computed as a function of barrier parameters. We find that for special parameters $T_K$ can be close to $1 {\rm K}$ and it can be of the same order of magnitude as the renormalized splitting $Δ$. However, in the perturbative regime we always find that $T_K \alt Δ$ with a $T_K \alt 1 {\rm K}$ [Aleiner {\em et al.}, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 86}, 2629 (2001)]. We also find that $Δ$ remains unrenormalized at energies above the Debye frequency, $ω_{\rm Debye}$.