Lateral manipulation and interplay of local Kondo resonances in a two-impurity Kondo system

Abstract

The atomic-scale spatial relationship of a two-impurity Kondo system has been determined at varying lateral distance by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and spectroscopy. The localized spins of two cobalt magnetic adatoms that are placed on different electrodes of an STM form two individual Kondo singlet states, each showing quite different Kondo coupling, i.e., the tip-Kondo with low Kondo temperature and the sample-Kondo with high Kondo temperature. The differential conductance dI/dV spectra show the continuous changes of the resonance peak feature when approaching the Kondo tip laterally to the local sample-Kondo impurity on the surface. The result indicates a notable interplay between these two Kondo systems. We propose a convolution model based on the q factor of the sample-Kondo (qs) and tip-Kondo (qt) to interpret the change of various tunneling channels and the evolution of the experimental spectra.