Tunneling into clean Heavy Fermion Compounds: Origin of the Fano Lineshape

Peter Wolfle, Yonatan Dubi, Alexander Balatsky

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Recently observed tunneling spectra on clean heavy fermion compounds show a lattice periodic Fano line shape similar to what is observed in the case of tunneling to a Kondo ion adsorbed at the surface. We show that the translation symmetry of a clean surface in the case of weakly correlated metals leads to a tunneling spectrum given by the superposition of the local weighted density of states of all energy bands involved, which does not have a Fano line shape. In particular the spectrum will show any hybridization gap present in the band structure. By contrast, in a strongly correlated heavy fermion metal the heavy quasiparticle states will be broadened by interaction effects. The broadening grows as one moves away from the Fermi surface, up to a value of the order of TK , the Kondo scale. We show that the hybridization gap is completely filled in this way, and an ideal Fano line shape of width TK results, similar to the impurity case. We also discuss the possible influence of the tunneling tip on the surface, in (i) leading to additional broadening of the Fano line, and(ii) enhancing the hybridization locally, hence adding to the impurity type behavior. The latter effects depend on the tip-surface distance. This work was supported by US DoE, LDRD and BES at Los ALamos.
Original languageAmerican English
Title of host publicationAPS March Meeting 2011, March 21-25, 2011
StatePublished - 1 Mar 2011
Externally publishedYes

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