  An Anderson impurity in a Hubbard model on chains with finite length is
studied using the density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) technique. In the
first place, we analyzed how the reduction of electron density from
half-filling to quarter-filling affects the Kondo resonance in the limit of
Hubbard repulsion U=0. In general, a weak dependence with the electron density
was found for the local density of states (LDOS) at the impurity except when
the impurity, at half-filling, is close to a mixed valence regime. Next, in the
central part of this paper, we studied the effects of finite Hubbard
interaction on the chain at quarter-filling. Our main result is that this
interaction drives the impurity into a more defined Kondo regime although
accompanied in most cases by a reduction of the spectral weight of the impurity
LDOS. Again, for the impurity in the mixed valence regime, we observed an
interesting nonmonotonic behavior. We also concluded that the conductance,
computed for a small finite bias applied to the leads, follows the behavior of
the impurity LDOS, as in the case of non-interacting chains. Finally, we
analyzed how the Hubbard interaction and the finite chain length affect the
spin compensation cloud both at zero and at finite temperature, in this case
using quantum Monte Carlo techniques.
