Friedel oscillations and interference patterns from multiple impurities in free fermions in continuous space and in correlated lattice electrons.

We study the interference patterns in the Friedel oscillations (FO) due to the scattering off either two or multiple impurities and scattering off extended inhomogeneities both in the non-interacting and two-dimensional lattice systems of interacting fermions. Correlations are accounted for by using an approximate method based on the real-space dynamical mean-field theory. We find that the interference maxima and minima change systematically as we vary the relative distance between the two impurities. At the same time, the interaction increase does not shift the position of interference fringes but only reduces their intensities. A comparison with the single impurity studies clearly shows complex patterns in FO induced by the additional scattering potentials. In the case of an extended step potential the system becomes more homogeneous when the interaction increases. FO and interference patterns are not present in the Mott insulating phase in the single and the many impurity models. Our theoretical study provides promising initial insights and motivate a further realistic modeling to investigate the role of interstitial defects, embedded impurities, ad-atoms on the surfaces, and surface irregularities in materials with different degrees of electronic correlation. For a complete description we also present analytical and numerical results of FO for non-interacting particles moving in a two and three dimensional continuous spaces. In the diluted impurity limit we derive results for FO due to scattering off many impurities, which are generalization of the original Friedel formula.