arXiv:1109.3801 · Physical Review B
Excitation energy after a smooth quench in a Luttinger liquid
Jacek Dziarmaga, Marek Tylutki
Abstract
Low-energy physics of quasi-one-dimensional ultracold atomic gases is often described by a gapless Luttinger liquid (LL). It is nowadays routine to manipulate these systems by changing their parameters in time but, no matter how slow the manipulation is, it must excite a gapless system. We study a smooth change of parameters of the LL (a smooth ``quench'') with a variable quench time and find that the excitation energy decays with an inverse power of the quench time. This universal exponent is $\ensuremath{-}2$ at zero temperature and $\ensuremath{-}1$ for slow enough quenches at finite temperature. The smooth quench does not excite beyond the range of validity of the low-energy LL description.