Kondo screening in Co adatoms with full Coulomb interaction

Abstract

Using a numerically exact first-principles many-body approach, we revisit the "prototypical" Kondo case of a cobalt impurity on copper. Even though this is considered a well understood example of the Kondo effect, we reveal an unexpectedly strong dependence of the screening properties on the parametrization of the local Coulomb tensor. As a consequence, the Kondo temperature can vary by orders of magnitude depending on the complexity of the parametrization of the electron-electron interaction. Further, we challenge the established picture of a spin-$1$ moment involving two cobalt $d$-orbitals only, as orbital-mixing interaction terms boost the contribution of the remainder of the $d$-shell.

15 pages, 14 figures; final version with extended bibliography and appendix