Toward a microscopic description of Kondo dimers on metallic surfaces

¹  Departamento de Física Teórica de la Materia Condensada, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Madrid E-28049, Spain, EU
²  Physikalisches Institut and Bethe Center for Theoretical Physics, Universität Bonn Nussallee 12 D-53115 Bonn, Germany, EU
³  Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Basel - CH-4056 Basel, Switzerland
⁴  Laboratoire de Physique et Modélisation des Milieux Condensés, CNRS and Université Joseph Fourier BP 166, F-38042 Grenoble, France, EU

Corresponding author: jaime.merino@uam.es

Received: 21 November 2008
Accepted: 25 January 2009

Abstract

Despite the experimental successes of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and the interest in more complex magnetic nanostructures, our present understanding and theoretical description of STM spectra of magnetic adatoms is mainly phenomenological and most often ignores quantum many-body effects. Here, we propose a theory which includes a microscopic description of the wave functions of the substrate and magnetic adatoms together with the quantum many-body effects. To test our theory, we have computed the STM spectra of magnetic cobalt monomers and dimers adsorbed on a metallic copper surface and successfully compared our results to recent available experimental data.