Micklitz T, Altland A, Costi T A, Rosch A
Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Cologne, 50937 Cologne, Germany.
Phys Rev Lett. 2006 Jun 9;96(22):226601. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.226601. Epub 2006 Jun 7.
We calculate the dephasing rate due to magnetic impurities in a weakly disordered metal as measured in a weak-localization experiment. If the density nS of magnetic impurities is sufficiently low, the dephasing rate 1/tauphi is a universal function, 1/tauphi=(nS/nu)f(T/TK), where TK is the Kondo temperature and nu is the density of states. We show that inelastic vertex corrections with a typical energy transfer DeltaE are suppressed by powers of 1/(tauphiDeltaE) proportional to nS. Therefore, the dephasing rate can be calculated from the inelastic cross section proportional to pinu ImT-/pinuT/2, where T is the T matrix which is evaluated numerically exactly using the numerical renormalization group.