Kondo Temperature and High to Low Temperature Crossover in Quantum Dots

Kondo temperature is standardly defined from the local zero-temperature susceptibility in the regime of strong electron correlations as a new scale controlling the low-temperature asymptotics of thermodynamic quantities. We show by using a two-particle self-consistent theory that the Kondo temperature can be identified as a crossover temperature at which the zero-temperature quantum fluctuations equal the thermal ones in the electron-hole correlation function. The high-temperature Curie-Weiss susceptibility is shown to go over to the Pauli one below the Kondo temperature.