Kondo effect in the presence of spin-orbit coupling

Abstract

We study the T=0 Kondo physics of a spin-1/2 impurity in a non-centrosymmetric metal with spin-orbit interaction. Within a simple variational approach we compute ground state properties of the system for an {\it arbitrary} form of spin-orbit coupling consistent with the crystal symmetry. This coupling produces an unscreened impurity magnetic moment and can lead to a significant change of the Kondo energy. We discuss implications of this finding both for dilute impurities and for heavy-fermion materials without inversion symmetry.

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