Dynamical magnetic anisotropy and quantum phase transitions in a vibrating spin-1 molecular junction

Abstract

We study the electronic transport through a spin-1 molecule in which mechanical stretching produces a magnetic anisotropy. In this type of device, a vibron mode along the stretching axis will couple naturally to the molecular spin. We consider a single molecular vibrational mode and find that the electron-vibron interaction induces an effective correction to the magnetic anisotropy that shifts the ground state of the device toward a non-Fermi-liquid phase. A transition into a Fermi-liquid phase could then be achieved, by means of mechanical stretching, passing through an underscreened spin-1 Kondo regime. We present numerical renormalization-group results for the differential conductance, the spectral density, and the magnetic susceptibility across the transition.