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arXiv:1505.03519

Fermionic Luttinger liquids from a microscopic perspective

Manuel Valiente, Lawrence Phillips, Nikolaj Thomas Zinner, Patrik Öhberg

Published May 13, 2015• 3 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We consider interacting one-dimensional, spinless Fermi gases, whose low-energy properties are described by Luttinger liquid theory. We perform a systematic, in-depth analysis of the relation between the macroscopic, phenomenological parameters of Luttinger liquid effective field theory, and the microscopic interactions of the Fermi gas. In particular, we begin by explaining how to model effective interactions in one dimension, which we then apply to the main forward scattering channel -- the interbranch collisions -- common to these systems. We renormalise the corresponding interbranch phenomenological constants in favour of scattering phase shifts. Interestingly, our renormalisation procedure shows (i) how Luttinger's model arises in a completely natural way -- and not as a convenient approximation -- from Tomonaga's model, and (ii) the reasons behind the interbranch coupling constant remaining unrenormalised in Luttinger's model. We then consider the so-called intrabranch processes, whose phenomenological coupling constant is known to be fixed by charge conservation, but whose microscopic origin is not well understood. We show that, contrary to general belief and common sense, the intrabranch interactions appearing in Luttinger liquid theory do not correspond to an intrabranch scattering channel, nor an energy shift due to intrabranch interactions, in the microscopic theory. Instead, they are due to interbranch processes. We finally apply our results to a particular example of an exactly solvable model, namely the fermionic dual to the Lieb-Liniger model in the Tonks-Girardeau and super-Tonks-Girardeau regimes.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1505.03519

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We consider interacting one-dimensional, spinless Fermi gases, whose low-energy properties are described by Luttinger liquid theory. We perform a systematic, in-depth analysis of the relation between the macroscopic, phenomenological parameters of Luttinger liquid effective field theory, and the microscopic interactions of the Fermi gas. In particular, we begin by explaining how to model effective interactions in one dimension, which we then apply to the main forward scattering channel -- the interbranch collisions -- common to these systems. We renormalise the corresponding interbranch phenomenological constants in favour of scattering phase shifts. Interestingly, our renormalisation procedure shows (i) how Luttinger's model arises in a completely natural way -- and not as a convenient approximation -- from Tomonaga's model, and (ii) the reasons behind the interbranch coupling constant remaining unrenormalised in Luttinger's model. We then consider the so-called intrabranch processes, whose phenomenological coupling constant is known to be fixed by charge conservation, but whose microscopic origin is not well understood. We show that, contrary to general belief and common sense, the intrabranch interactions appearing in Luttinger liquid theory do not correspond to an intrabranch scattering channel, nor an energy shift due to intrabranch interactions, in the microscopic theory. Instead, they are due to interbranch processes. We finally apply our results to a particular example of an exactly solvable model, namely the fermionic dual to the Lieb-Liniger model in the Tonks-Girardeau and super-Tonks-Girardeau regimes.
Abstract Luttinger liquid theory is a powerful and widely applicable framework for modelling one-dimensional many-body quantum systems. Within this framework, one supposes that the macroscopic behaviour of such systems is entirely determined by two phenomenological parameters, g 2 and g 4 . While there exists an intuitive and seemingly sensible physical interpretation of these parameters in terms of the scattering of the system’s constituent particles, g 2 and g 4 are traditionally either fixed by experiment or calculated using heavy-duty numerical techniques, rather than inferred using scattering theory, and for this reason the interpretation remains untested. By applying Luttinger liquid theory in a simple setting, we show that a widely-held and repeatedly-stated belief, namely that the intrabranch terms appearing in Luttinger’s model originate from microscopic intrabranch interactions, is a misconception. We begin with the microscopic model of an interacting one-dimensional, spin-polarized Fermi gas, which we systematically transform into a Luttinger model by introducing an effective interaction, linearizing the dispersion, and renormalizing. By this method, we are able to show that the usual interpretation of g 4 as a measure of intrabranch scattering implies that it must vanish in the dilute limit. Since this runs contrary to conservation of particle number, we conclude that g 4 cannot be related to intrabranch scattering. Rather, we show that g 4 interactions must be included in the effective model in order to compensate for the deleterious effect that introducing an effective interaction has upon the model’s energetics. We explicitly calculate an approximation to this correction for our simple system, and find that it agrees with the value of g 4 found in the literature. We therefore propose a new fermionic Hamiltonian which agrees with the traditional model after bosonisation, but which better reflects the underlying microscopic physics.
We review the theory of interacting Fermi systems whose low-energy physics is dominated by forward scattering, that is scattering processes generated by effective interactions with small momentum transfers. These systems include Fermi liquids as well as several important non-Fermi-liquid phases: one-dimensional Luttinger liquids, systems with long-range interactions, and fermions coupled to a gauge field. We report results for the critical dimensions separating different 'universality classes' and discuss the behaviour of physical quantities such as the momentum distribution function, the single-particle propagator and low-energy response functions in each class. The renormalization group for Fermi systems will be reviewed and applied as a link between microscopic models and effective lowenergy theories. Particular attention is paid to conservation laws, which constrain any effective low-energy theory of interacting Fermi systems. In scattering processes with small momentum transfers the velocity of each scattering particle is (almost) conserved. This asymptotic conservation law leads to non-trivial cancellations of Feynman diagrams and other simplifications, making thus possible a non-perturbative treatment of forward scattering via Ward identities or bosonization techniques.
The explicitly soluble Luttinger model is used as a basis for the description of the general interacting Fermi gas in one dimension, which will be called 'Luttinger liquid theory', by analogy with Fermi liquid theory. The excitation spectrum of the Luttinger model is described by density-wave, charge and current excitations; its spectral properties determine a characteristic parameter that controls the correlation function exponents. These relations are shown to survive in non-soluble generalisations of the model with a non-linear fermion dispersion. It is proposed that this low-energy structure is universal to a wide class of 1D systems with conducting or fluid properties, including spin chains.
The explicitly soluble Luttinger model is used as a basis for the description of the general interacting Fermi gas in one dimension, which will be called 'Luttinger liquid theory', by analogy with Fermi liquid theory. The excitation spectrum of the Luttinger model is described by density-wave, charge and current excitations; its spectral properties determine a characteristic parameter that controls the correlation function exponents. These relations are shown to survive in non-soluble generalisations of the model with a non-linear fermion dispersion. It is proposed that this low-energy structure is universal to a wide class of 1D systems with conducting or fluid properties, including spin chains.
We review the progress in the theory of one-dimensional (ID) Fermi liquids which has occurred over the past decade. The usual Fermi liquid theory, based on a quasi-particle picture, breaks down in one dimension because of the Peierls divergence in the particle-hole bubble, producing anomalous dimensions of operators, and because of charge-spin separation. Both are related to the importance of scattering processes transferring finite momentum. A description of the low-energy properties of gapless 1D quantum systems can be based on the exactly solvable Luttinger model which incorporates these features, and whose correlation functions can be calculated. Special properties of the eigenvalue spectrum, parameterized by one renormalized velocity and one effective coupling constant per degree of freedom, fully describe the physics of this model. Other gapless 1D models share these properties in a low-energy subspace. The concept of a "Luttinger liquid" implies that their low-energy properties are described by an effective Luttinger model, and constitutes the universality class of these quantum systems. Once the mapping on the Luttinger model is achieved, one has an asymptotically exact solution of the 1D many-body problem. Lattice models identified as Luttinger liquids include the 1D Hubbard model off half-filling, and variants such as the t-J- or the extended Hubbard model. In addition, 1D electron-phonon systems or metals with impurities can be Luttinger liquids, as well as the edge states in the quantum Hall effect.
In contrast to the well-known Fermi-liquid theory of three dimensions, interacting one-dimensional and quasi-one-dimensional systems of fermions are described at low energy by an effective theory known as Luttinger liquid theory. This theory is expressed in terms of collective many-body excitations that show exotic behavior such as spin-charge separation. Luttinger liquid theory is commonly applied on the premise that ``low energy'' describes both the spin and charge sectors. However, when the interactions in the system are very strong, as they typically are at low particle densities, the ratio of spin to charge energy may become exponentially small. It is then possible at very low temperatures for the single-spin excitation energy to be low compared to the characteristic single excitation charge energy, but still high compared to the characteristic spin energy. This energy window of near ground-state charge degrees of freedom but highly thermally excited spin degrees of freedom is called a spin-incoherent Luttinger liquid. The spin-incoherent Luttinger liquid exhibits a higher degree of universality than the Luttinger liquid and its properties are qualitatively distinct. In this Colloquium some recent theoretical developments in the field are detailed and experimental indications of such a regime in gated semiconductor quantum wires are described.