Spin and thermal current scaling at a junction of XX spin chains
Phys. Rev. B 112, 205121 – Published 18 November, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/9pvr-329m
Abstract
We study the boundary phase diagram and the low-temperature heat and magnetization transport at a junction of XX spin chains. Depending on the magnetization axis anisotropy between the magnetic exchange interactions at the junction, the system exhibits two different strong-coupling regimes at low energies/temperatures, hosting a remarkable realization of, respectively, the overscreened (topological) four- and to the two-channel Kondo fixed points, both robust against anisotropies in the chain parameters and/or in the boundary couplings. Using renormalization group arguments combined with boundary conformal field theory methods, we show the instability of the former under any XY-type anisotropy at the junction. Our system allows for using the low-temperature spin and the heat conductances to evidence the fractionalization of the elementary excitations at the four-channel Kondo fixed point by means of the magnetic Wiedemann-Franz law. We caution that the instability under XY anisotropy may hinder the detection of the phenomenology related to the four-channel Kondo effect, therefore requiring careful control in experimental realizations.
