Local electronic structure and Fano interference in tunneling into a Kondo hole system

Phys Rev Lett. 2012 May 4;108(18):186401. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.186401. Epub 2012 Apr 30.

Abstract

Motivated by the recent success of local electron tunneling into heavy-fermion materials, we study the local electronic structure around a single Kondo hole in an Anderson lattice model and the Fano interference pattern relevant to STM experiments. Within the Gutzwiller method, we find that an intragap bound state exists in the heavy Fermi liquid regime. The energy position of the intragap bound state is dependent on the on-site potential scattering strength in the conduction and f-orbital channels. Within the same method, we derive a new dI/dV formulation, which includes explicitly the renormalization effect due to the f-electron correlation. It is found that the Fano interference gives asymmetric coherent peaks separated by the hybridization gap. The intragap peak structure has a lorenzian shape, and the corresponding dI/dV intensity depends on the energy location of the bound state.