Andrew Mitchell

Many-body quantum interference route to the two-channel Kondo effect: Inverse design for molecular junctions

Molecular junctions -- whether actual single molecules in nanowire break junctions or artificial molecules realized in coupled quantum dot devices -- offer unique functionality due to their orbital complexity, strong electron interactions and gate control, as well as many-body effects arising from hybridization with the external electronic circuit. Inverse design for such systems involves finding candidate structures that perform a desired function optimally. Here we develop an inverse design strategy for generalized quantum impurity models describing molecular junctions; and as a nontrivial example, we use it to demonstrate that many-body quantum interference can be leveraged to realize the celebrated two-channel Kondo critical point in simple 4- or 5-site molecular moieties. We show that remarkably high Kondo temperatures can be achieved, meaning that smoking-gun entropy and transport signatures should be experimentally accessible. We give an outlook towards using such platforms to realize many-body Majorana zero modes, localized by quantum interference, in nanostructures.