Dephasing in Metals by Two-Level Systems in the 2-Channel-Kondo Regime

Preprint

28 September 1999

preprint
Published by arXiv in arXiv

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.cond-mat/9902176

Abstract

We point out a novel, non-universal contribution to the dephasing rate 1/\tau_\phi \equiv \gamma_\phi of conduction electrons in metallic systems: scattering off non-magnetic two-level systems (TLSs) having almost degenerate Kondo ground states. In the regime \Delta_{ren} < T < T_K (\Delta_{ren} = renormalized level splitting, T_K = Kondo temperature), such TLSs exhibit non-Fermi-liquid physics that can cause \gamma_\phi, which generally decreases with decreasing T, to seemingly saturate in a limited temperature range before vanishing for T \to 0. This could explain the saturation of dephasing recently observed in gold wires [Mohanty et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 3366 (1997)].

Keywords

All Related Versions

Version 1, 1999-02-11, ArXiv
Version 2, 1999-09-28, ArXiv
Published version: Physical Review Letters, 83 (13), 2632.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: