Eur. Phys. J. B (2013) 86: 353
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2013-40418-3

Regular Article

Mesoscopic fluctuations in the Fermi-liquid regime of the Kondo problem

¹ Université Paris-Sud, LPTMS, UMR8626, 91405 Orsay, France
² CNRS, 91405 Orsay, France
³ Department of Physics, Duke University, Box 90305, Durham, NC 27708-0305, USA
⁴ Université de Bordeaux, LOMA, UMR 5798, 33400 Talence, France
⁵ CNRS, LOMA, UMR 5798, 33400 Talence, France

^a e-mail: denis.ullmo@u-psud.fr

Received: 19 April 2013
Received in final form: 25 June 2013
Published online: 7 August 2013

Abstract

We consider the low temperature regime of the mesoscopic Kondo problem, and in particular the relevance of a Fermi-liquid description of this regime. Mesoscopic fluctuations of both the quasiparticle energy levels and the corresponding wavefunctions are large in this case. These mesoscopic fluctuations make the traditional approach to Fermi-liquids impracticable, as it assumes the existence of a limited number of relevant parameters. We show here how this difficulty can be overcome and discuss the relationship between the resulting Fermi-liquid description “à la Nozières” and the mean field slave fermion approximation.