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arXiv:0808.1093 · Physical Review B

Quantum interference and spin-charge separation in a disordered Luttinger liquid

A. G. Yashenkin, I. V. Gornyi, A. D. Mirlin, Dmitry G. Polyakov

Published Nov 7, 2008• 12 citations
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Abstract

We study the influence of spin on the quantum interference of interacting electrons in a single-channel disordered quantum wire within the framework of the Luttinger liquid (LL) model. The nature of the electron interference in a spinful LL is particularly nontrivial because the elementary bosonic excitations that carry charge and spin propagate with different velocities. We extend the functional-bosonization approach to treat the fermionic and bosonic degrees of freedom in a disordered spinful LL on an equal footing. We analyze the effect of spin-charge separation at finite temperature both on the spectral properties of single-particle fermionic excitations and on the conductivity of a disordered quantum wire. We demonstrate that the notion of weak localization, related to the interference of multiple-scattered electron waves and their decoherence due to electron-electron scattering, remains applicable to the spin-charge separated system. The relevant dephasing length, governed by the interplay of inelastic electron-electron interactions and spin-charge separation, is found to be parametrically shorter than in a spinless LL. We calculate both the quantum (weak localization) and classical (memory effect) corrections to the conductivity of a disordered spinful LL. The classical correction is shown to dominate in the limit of high temperature.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.78.205407

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We study the influence of spin on the quantum interference of interacting electrons in a single-channel disordered quantum wire within the framework of the Luttinger liquid (LL) model. The nature of the electron interference in a spinful LL is particularly nontrivial because the elementary bosonic excitations that carry charge and spin propagate with different velocities. We extend the functional-bosonization approach to treat the fermionic and bosonic degrees of freedom in a disordered spinful LL on an equal footing. We analyze the effect of spin-charge separation at finite temperature both on the spectral properties of single-particle fermionic excitations and on the conductivity of a disordered quantum wire. We demonstrate that the notion of weak localization, related to the interference of multiple-scattered electron waves and their decoherence due to electron-electron scattering, remains applicable to the spin-charge separated system. The relevant dephasing length, governed by the interplay of inelastic electron-electron interactions and spin-charge separation, is found to be parametrically shorter than in a spinless LL. We calculate both the quantum (weak localization) and classical (memory effect) corrections to the conductivity of a disordered spinful LL. The classical correction is shown to dominate in the limit of high temperature.
We study the transport properties of interacting electrons in a disordered quantum wire within the framework of the Luttinger liquid model. The conductivity at finite temperature is nonzero only because of inelastic electron-electron scattering. We demonstrate that the notion of weak localization is applicable to the strongly correlated one-dimensional electron system. We calculate the relevant dephasing rate, which for spinless electrons is governed by the interplay of electron-electron interaction and disorder, thus vanishing in the clean limit.
We study the transport properties of interacting electrons in a disordered quantum wire within the framework of the Luttinger-liquid model. We demonstrate that the notion of weak localization is applicable to the strongly correlated one-dimensional electron system. Two alternative approaches to the problem are developed, both combining fermionic and bosonic treatment of the underlying physics. We calculate the relevant dephasing rate, which for spinless electrons is governed by the interplay of electron-electron interaction and disorder, thus vanishing in the clean limit. Our approach provides a framework for a systematic study of mesoscopic effects in strongly correlated electron systems.
The Luttinger liquid model, which describes interacting electrons in a single-channel quantum wire, is completely integrable in the absence of disorder and as such does not exhibit any relaxation to equilibrium. We consider relaxation processes induced by inelastic electron-electron interactions in a disordered Luttinger liquid, focusing on the equilibration rate and its essential differences from the electron-electron scattering rate as well as the rate of phase relaxation. In the first part of the paper, we review the basic concepts in a disordered Luttinger liquid at equilibrium. These include the elastic renormalization, dephasing, and interference-induced localization. In the second part, we formulate a conceptually important framework for systematically studying the nonequilibrium properties of a strongly correlated (non-Fermi) Luttinger liquid. We derive a coupled set of kinetic equations for the fermionic and bosonic distribution functions that describe the evolution of a nonequilibrium Luttinger liquid. Remarkably, the energy equilibration rate in the conducting disordered quantum wire (at sufficiently high temperature, when the localization effects are suppressed by dephasing) is shown to be on the order of the rate of elastic scattering off disorder, independent of the interaction constant and temperature.
We consider strongly interacting one-dimensional electron liquids where elementary excitations carry either spin or charge. At small temperatures a spinon created at the bottom of its band scatters off low-energy spin and charge excitations and follows the diffusive motion of a Brownian particle in momentum space. We calculate the mobility characterizing these processes and show that the resulting diffusion coefficient of the spinon is parametrically enhanced at low temperatures compared to that of a mobile impurity in a spinless Luttinger liquid. We briefly discuss that this hints at the relevance of spin in the process of equilibration of strongly interacting one-dimensional electrons, and comment on implications for transport in clean single-channel quantum wires.
We theoretically investigate transport in a spin-incoherent one-dimensional electron system, which may be realized in quantum wires at low-electron density and finite temperature. Both the pure and disordered cases are considered, both in finite wires and in the thermodynamic limit. The effect of Fermi-liquid leads attached to the finite-length system is also addressed. In the infinite system, we find a phase diagram identical to that obtained for a spinless Luttinger liquid, provided we make the identification g=2gcg=2{g}_{c}g=2gc​, where ggg is the interaction parameter in a spinless Luttinger liquid and gc{g}_{c}gc​ is the interaction parameter of the charge sector of a Luttinger-liquid theory for electrons with spin. For a finite-length wire attached to Fermi-liquid leads, the transport depends on the details of the disorder in the wire. A simple picture for the crossover from the spin-incoherent regime to the spin-coherent regime as the temperature is varied is also discussed, as well as some physical implications.
In one-dimensional electronic systems with strong repulsive interactions, charge excitations propagate much faster than spin excitations. Such systems therefore have an intermediate temperature range [termed the ``spin-incoherent Luttinger liquid'' (SILL) regime] where charge excitations are ``cold'' (i.e., have low entropy) whereas spin excitations are ``hot.'' We explore the effects of charge-sector disorder in the SILL regime in the absence of external sources of equilibration. We argue that the disorder localizes all charge-sector excitations; however, spin excitations are protected against full localization, and act as a heat bath facilitating charge and energy transport on asymptotically long time scales. The charge, spin, and energy conductivities are widely separated from one another. The dominant carriers of energy in much of the SILL regime are neither charge nor spin excitations, but neutral ``phonon'' modes, which undergo an unconventional form of hopping transport that we discuss. We comment on the applicability of these ideas to experiments and numerical simulations.