Intermediate coupling fixed point study in the overscreened regime of generalized multichannel SU(N) Kondo models

Abstract

We study a generalized multichannel single-impurity Kondo model, in which the impurity spin is described by a representation of the SU(N) group which combines bosonic and fermionic degrees of freedom. The impurity spin states are described by Abrikosov pseudofermions, and we make use of a method initiated by Popov and Fedotov which allows a proper handling of the fermionic constraint. The partition function is derived within a path integral approach. We use renormalization group techniques to calculate the $β$ scaling function perturbatively in powers of the Kondo coupling constant, which is justified in the weak coupling limit. The truncated expansion is valid in the overscreened (Nozieres-Blandin) regime, for an arbitrary SU(N) group and any value of the parameters characterizing the impurity spin representation. The intermediate coupling fixed point is identified. We derive the temperature dependence of various physical quantities at low T, controlled by a unique critical exponent, and show that the physics of the system in the overscreened regime governed by the intermediate coupling fixed point is characterized by a non-Fermi liquid behavior. Our results are in accordance with those obtained by other methods, as Bethe ansatz and boundary conformal field theory, in the case of various impurity spin symmetries. We establish in a unified way that the Kondo models in which the impurity spin is described successively by a fundamental, symmetric, antisymmetric and mixed symmetry representation yield all the same low-energy physics in the overscreened regime. Possible generalizations of the analysis we present to the case of arbitrary impurity spin representations of SU(N) are also discussed.