We investigate the magnetic properties of a heterostructure comprised of alternating metallic and Mott insulating layers of fermions with varying interlayer hybridization. Results from large-scale quantum Monte Carlo simulations at half-filling show clear evidence of induced magnetism in the metallic layers due to coupling to the Mott insulating layers at small to intermediate values of interlayer hopping. The in-plane magnetism is completely suppressed via a Kondo proximity effect when the coupling between adjacent layers is increased beyond a critical strength. The nature of the phase in the Kondo-like insulating regime is investigated and is shown to be dominated by simultaneous in-plane and interplane short-range correlations.

• Received 1 March 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.88.094415