A modified version of the spinless Anderson model is studied by means of the continuoustime quantum Monte Carlo method. This study is motivated by the peculiar heavy-fermion behavior observed in certain Samarium compounds, which is insensitive to magnetic field. The model involves M channels for conduction electrons, all of which interact with local f electron via the Coulomb repulsion U f c , while only one channel has hybridization with the local state. The effective hybridization is reduced by the Anderson orthogonality effect, and a quantum critical point occurs with increasing M and/or increasing U f c . The numerical results at finite temperature of the local charge susceptibility are well fitted by a simple scaling theory for all M . However, the single-particle spectrum is described by a double Lorentzian for M > 1, in contrast with the single Lorentzian with M = 1. A quasi-particle perturbation theory is presented that reproduces the quantum critical point for large M . The quasi-particle theory gives not only the renormalized energy scale, but its extrapolation toward higher energies being consistent with the double Lorentzian spectrum.KEYWORDS: charge Kondo effect, continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo method, quasi-particle perturbation theory, thermodynamic and dynamic properties
IntroductionRecently, peculiar heavy-fermion behavior has attracted attention in certain Samarium compounds with large specific heat coefficient γ which is insensitive to external magnetic field. For example, the filled skutterudite compound SmOs 4 Sb 12 has γ ∼ 0.8J/(K 2 · mol) even though it is mixed valent. 1) Similar behavior has been found in systems such as SmPt 4 Ge 12 2) and SmT 2 Al 20 with T=Ti,V,Cr,Ta. 3-5) The resistivity of SmT 2 Al 20 shows clear Kondo-like logarithmic temperature dependence, which however is insensitive to external magnetic field.3) It has been suspected that charge degrees of freedom is responsible for the heavy mass because of the field-insensitivity, in striking contrast to ordinary Kondo effect which is sensitive to magnetic field.Motivated by these experimental observations we search for a charge fluctuation mechanism that gives rise to energy scale much smaller than bare hybridization. As the simplest attempt, we study the (spinless) multichannel interacting resonant level model (MIRLM) by means of the continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo method, which starts from the Anderson model involving the hybridization (V ) of the local charge with only one of the conduction electron orbitals, but includes additional Coulomb interaction (U f c ) felt by all conduction orbitals with the local f state. The Hamiltonian of this model is written as