Ground-state properties of the symmetric single-impurity Anderson model on a ring from density-matrix renormalization group, Hartree-Fock, and Gutzwiller theory

We analyze the ground-state energy, magnetization, magnetic susceptibility, and Kondo screening cloud of the symmetric single-impurity Anderson model (SIAM) that is characterized by the bandwidth $W$, the impurity interaction strength $U$, and the local hybridization $V$. We compare Gutzwiller variational and magnetic Hartree-Fock results in the thermodynamic limit with numerically exact data from the density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method on large rings. To improve the DMRG performance, we use a canonical transformation to map the SIAM onto a chain with half the system size and open boundary conditions. We compare to Bethe ansatz results for the ground-state energy, magnetization, and spin susceptibility that become exact in the wide-band limit. Our detailed comparison shows that the field-theoretical description is applicable to the SIAM on a ring for a broad parameter range. Hartree-Fock theory gives an excellent ground-state energy and local moment for intermediate and strong interactions. However, it lacks spin fluctuations and thus cannot screen the impurity spin. The Gutzwiller variational energy bound becomes very poor for large interactions because it does not describe properly the charge fluctuations. Nevertheless, the Gutzwiller approach provides a qualitatively correct description of the zero-field susceptibility and the Kondo screening cloud. The DMRG provides excellent data for the ground-state energy and the magnetization for finite external fields. At strong interactions, finite-size effects make it extremely difficult to recover the exponentially large zero-field susceptibility and the mesoscopically large Kondo screening cloud.