Spin-Valley Anderson Impurity for Moiré Systems: Fermi Liquid, Pairing, and Pseudogap

Abstract

Recent experiments support that the magic-angle graphene can be modeled by a periodic array of correlated quantum impurities, immersed in a Dirac sea. This work analytically tackles a spin-valley Anderson impurity, featuring a general (anti-)Hund's interaction ($J_D,J_S$) that can originate from electron-phonon couplings. We derive its full phase diagram, which encompasses rich continuous local phase transitions, and presents a unified origin for pairing potential and pseudogap. In particular, $J_D$ favors a valley doublet, and we show it drives a BKT transition out of heavy Fermi liquid, to an anisotropic doublet phase exhibiting a non-analytic zero-energy kink in the impurity spectral function. $J_S$ drives a second-order transition out of heavy Fermi liquid, to a local singlet phase, with a non-Fermi liquid critical point. We analyze the pairing potential across the phase diagram, and unveil their ubiquitous existence triggered by the (anti-)Hund's multiplet splitting. Crucially, we show the pseudogap shoulders in the spectral function represent multiplet excitations induced by an injected electron or hole. All results are obtained analytically, using techniques including bosonization-refermionization, with further verification by numerical renormalization group calculations. Then we derive the correlation self-energy ansatze that account for pseudogap, and apply to the magic-angle graphene lattice.

33 pages, 8 figures