  In order to study the interplay between Kondo and
Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) interaction, we calculate the spin-spin
correlation functions between two Kondo impurities coupled to different sites
of a half-filled open Hubbard chain. Using the density-matrix renormalization
group (DMRG), we re-examine the exponents for the power-law decay of the
correlation function between the two impurity spins as a function of the
antiferromagnetic coupling J, the Hubbard interaction U, and the distance R
between the impurities. The exponents for finite systems obtained in this work
deviate from previously published DMRG calculations. We furthermore show that
the long-distance behavior of the exponents is the same for impurities coupled
to the bulk or to both ends of the chain. We note that a universal exponent for
the asymptotic behavior cannot be extracted from these finite-size systems with
open boundary conditions.
