Chiral Y junction of Luttinger liquid wires at strong coupling: Fermionic representation

Abstract

We calculate the conductances of a three-terminal junction setup of spinless Luttinger liquid wires threaded by a magnetic flux, allowing for different interaction strength ${g}_{3}\ensuremath{\ne}g$ in the third wire. We employ the fermionic representation in the scattering state picture, allowing for a direct calculation of the linear response conductances, without the need of introducing contact resistances at the connection points to the outer ideal leads. The matrix of conductances is parametrized by three variables. For these we derive coupled renormalization group (RG) equations, by summing up infinite classes of contributions in perturbation theory. The resulting general structure of the RG equations may be employed to describe junctions with an arbitrary number of wires and arbitrary interaction strength in each wire. The fixed point structure of these equations (for the chiral Y junction) is analyzed in detail. For repulsive interaction ($g,{g}_{3}>0$) there is only one stable fixed point, corresponding to the complete separation of the wires. For attractive interaction ($g<0$ and/or ${g}_{3}<0$) four fixed points are found, the stability of which depends on the interaction strength. We confirm our previous weak-coupling result of lines of fixed points for special values of the interaction parameters reaching into the strong-coupling domain. We find new fixed points not discussed before, even at the symmetric line $g={g}_{3}$, at variance with the results of M. Oshikawa et al. [J. Stat. Mech. (2006) P02008]. The pair-tunneling phenomenon conjectured by the latter authors is not found by us.