arXiv:1508.07125 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B
Nature of the many-body excitations in a quantum wire: Theory and experiment
Oleksandr Tsyplyatyev, A. J. Schofield, Yuan Jin, M. Moreno, W. K. Tan, Ankita Anirban, Christopher J. B. Ford, Jonathan P. Griffiths, Ian A. Farrer, G. A. C. Jones, D. A. Ritchie
The natural excitations of an interacting one-dimensional system at low energy are the hydrodynamic modes of a Luttinger liquid, protected by the Lorentz invariance of the linear dispersion. We show that beyond low energies, where the quadratic dispersion reduces the symmetry to Galilean, the main character of the many-body excitations changes into a hierarchy: calculations of dynamic correlation functions for fermions (without spin) show that the spectral weights of the excitations are proportional to powers of ${\mathcal{R}}^{2}/{L}^{2}$, where $\mathcal{R}$ is a length-scale related to interactions and $L$ is the system length. Thus only small numbers of excitations carry the principal spectral power in representative regions on the energy-momentum planes. We have analyzed the spectral function in detail and have shown that the first-level (strongest) excitations form a mode with parabolic dispersion, like that of a renormalized single particle. The second-level excitations produce a singular power-law line shape to the first-level mode and multiple power laws at the spectral edge. We have illustrated a crossover to a Luttinger liquid at low energy by calculating the local density of states through all energy scales: from linear to nonlinear, and to above the chemical potential energies. In order to test this model, we have carried out experiments to measure the momentum-resolved tunneling of electrons (fermions with spin) from/to a wire formed within a GaAs heterostructure. We observe a well-resolved spin-charge separation at low energy with appreciable interaction strength and only a parabolic dispersion of the first-level mode at higher energies. We find a structure resembling the second-level excitations, which dies away rapidly at high momentum in line with the theoretical predictions here.
The natural excitations of an interacting one-dimensional system at low energy are the hydrodynamic modes of a Luttinger liquid, protected by the Lorentz invariance of the linear dispersion. We show that beyond low energies, where the quadratic dispersion reduces the symmetry to Galilean, the main character of the many-body excitations changes into a hierarchy: calculations of dynamic correlation functions for fermions (without spin) show that the spectral weights of the excitations are proportional to powers of R2/L2, where R is a length-scale related to interactions and L is the system length. Thus only small numbers of excitations carry the principal spectral power in representative regions on the energy-momentum planes. We have analyzed the spectral function in detail and have shown that the first-level (strongest) excitations form a mode with parabolic dispersion, like that of a renormalized single particle. The second-level excitations produce a singular power-law line shape to the first-level mode and multiple power laws at the spectral edge. We have illustrated a crossover to a Luttinger liquid at low energy by calculating the local density of states through all energy scales: from linear to nonlinear, and to above the chemical potential energies. In order to test this model, we have carried out experiments to measure the momentum-resolved tunneling of electrons (fermions with spin) from/to a wire formed within a GaAs heterostructure. We observe a well-resolved spin-charge separation at low energy with appreciable interaction strength and only a parabolic dispersion of the first-level mode at higher energies. We find a structure resembling the second-level excitations, which dies away rapidly at high momentum in line with the theoretical predictions here.
Studying interacting fermions in one dimension at high energy, we find a hierarchy in the spectral weights of the excitations theoretically, and we observe evidence for second-level excitations experimentally. Diagonalizing a model of fermions (without spin), we show that levels of the hierarchy are separated by powers of R^{2}/L^{2}, where R is a length scale related to interactions and L is the system length. The first-level (strongest) excitations form a mode with parabolic dispersion, like that of a renormalized single particle. The second-level excitations produce a singular power-law line shape to the first-level mode and multiple power laws at the spectral edge. We measure momentum-resolved tunneling of electrons (fermions with spin) from or to a wire formed within a GaAs heterostructure, which shows parabolic dispersion of the first-level mode and well-resolved spin-charge separation at low energy with appreciable interaction strength. We find structure resembling the second-level excitations, which dies away quite rapidly at high momentum.
The properties of fermions in one dimension are markedly different from those in higher dimensions. In two or three dimensions, the many-body behaviour of fermions is described by the Fermi liquid model, whose most prominent result is that, instead of studying the behaviour of individual particles, it is better to describe the emergent phenomena of the whole system, known as quasiparticles. These are collective modes of excitations born out of particle-particle interactions, which resemble the constituent single particles, albeit with renormalised mass. In one dimension, however, the formation of such a correlated state is unfavourable and the quasiparticles are completely absent. Instead, 1D fermions are described by a model known as the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid. Central to this model is the process of bosonisation, a mathematical technique which maps the excitation of fermions to bosonic modes of spin-density and charge-density waves. As a prerequisite of the bosonisation technique, the fermionic single-particle dispersion is approximated as a linear function. Consequently, the Luttinger liquid model is limited in its scope of applicability. Specifically, it is valid only in the vicinity of the Fermi points, where the excitation energy is low. Recent advancement in the theoretical field has expanded our understanding of 1D interacting fermions beyond the limit of linearity. The mobile-impurity model, proposed by L. Glazman and his co-authors, is a generalised model of 1D fermions which extends the scope of applicability of the Tomanaga-Luttinger model, accounting for the curvature of single-particle dispersion relations. It extends the region of validity of the tradition TLL theory from the neighbourhood of the Fermi points to a band which follows the single-particle dispersion. This thesis presents the results of an experimental work which provides direct evidence of non-linear behaviour predicted by the new model. It revolves around the measurement of the spectral function of electrons in surface-gate-defined quantum wires on a double-quantum-well, GaAs/AlGaAs device, and the comparison and fitting of the result to the non-linear theory. The spectral function is a theoretical concept frequently used in discussions on many-body problems. Its physical interpretation makes it closely related to experimental observables, such as the tunnelling current between the double quantum wells in this work. This thesis consists of three parts. Part one concerns the theories of the various many-body models and the experimental technique: Chapter 1 briefly introduces the concept of Fermi liquid, before focusing on a detailed account of the Luttinger-liquid model. The mobile-impurity model will be introduced in the framework of the Luttinger liquid model afterwards, followed by a review of experimental works reported in the literature on the study of TLL physics. In Chapter 2, the principles of the experimental tunnelling spectroscopy technique are described. The second part of the thesis details the structure of the test device used in the experiment and its fabrication. In particular, we will discuss the intricacies of the three-dimensional EBL fabrication process developed specifically for this project. The setup and running of the measurement circuit will also be discussed in this part of the thesis, in the context of a prerequisite sample characterisation measurement. In the final part of the work, data from the main experiment will be presented and analysed, in search for the electron-electron interaction effects which are predicted by the theoretical discussions in the first chapter.
Motivated by recent tunneling experiments in the parallel wire geometry, we calculate results for momentum resolved tunneling into a short one-dimensional wire, containing a small number of electrons. We derive some general theorems about the momentum dependence, and we carry out exact calculations for up to N=4 electrons in the final state, for a system with screened Coulomb interactions that models the situation of the experiments. We also investigate the limit of large N using a Luttinger-liquid type analysis. We consider the low-density regime, where the system is close to the Wigner crystal limit, and where the energy scale for spin excitations can be much lower than for charge excitations, and we consider temperatures intermediate between the relevant spin energies and charge excitations, as well as temperatures below both energy scales.
For many years, the Luttinger liquid theory has served as a useful paradigm for the description of one-dimensional (1D) quantum fluids in the limit of low energies. This theory is based on a linearization of the dispersion relation of the particles constituting the fluid. Recent progress in understanding 1D quantum fluids beyond the low-energy limit is reviewed, where the nonlinearity of the dispersion relation becomes essential. The novel methods which have been developed to tackle such systems combine phenomenology built on the ideas of the Fermi-edge singularity and the Fermi-liquid theory, perturbation theory in the interaction strength, and new ways of treating finite-size properties of integrable models. These methods can be applied to a wide variety of 1D fluids, from 1D spin liquids to electrons in quantum wires to cold atoms confined by 1D traps. Existing results for various dynamic correlation functions are reviewed, in particular, the dynamic structure factor and the spectral function. Moreover, it is shown how a dispersion nonlinearity leads to finite particle lifetimes and its impact on the transport properties of 1D systems at finite temperatures is discussed. The conventional Luttinger liquid theory is a special limit of the new theory, and the relation between the two is explained.
We reinvestigate the momentum-resolved single-particle spectral function of the Tomonaga-Luttinger model. In particular, we focus on the role of the momentum dependence of the two-particle interaction V(q). Usually, V(q) is assumed to be a constant and integrals are regularized in the ultraviolet ``by hand'' employing an ad hoc procedure. As the momentum dependence of the interaction is irrelevant in the renormalization group sense, this does not affect the universal low-energy properties of the model, e.g., exponents of power laws, if all energy scales are sent to zero. If, however, the momentum k is fixed away from the Fermi momentum kF, with $|k\ensuremath{-}{k}_{\mathrm{F}}|$ setting a nonvanishing energy scale, the details of V(q) start to matter. We provide strong evidence that any curvature of the two-particle interaction at small transferred momentum q destroys power-law scaling of the momentum-resolved spectral function as a function of energy. Even for $|k\ensuremath{-}{k}_{\mathrm{F}}|$ much smaller than the momentum-space range of the interaction the spectral line shape depends on the details of V(q). The significance of our results for universality in the Luttinger liquid sense, for experiments on quasi-one-dimensional metals, and for recent results on the spectral function of one-dimensional correlated systems taking effects of the curvature of the single-particle dispersion into account (``nonlinear LL phenomenology'') is discussed.
We develop the theory of hydrodynamic fluctuations for one-dimensional quantum liquids. At low temperatures the relaxation of interacting electrons in a single-channel wire separates into two classes: equilibration, which changes the numbers of right and left movers through backscattering and is exponentially slow, and thermalization, which redistributes energy and momentum at a fixed number of movers at a power-law rate. This separation of time scales gives the electron liquid a two-fluid description analogous to superfluid 4He, with the zero mode of the Luttinger liquid as the superfluid component and the gas of thermal excitations as the normal component. Using Onsager reciprocity and the fluctuation-dissipation theorem, we add Langevin fluxes to the two-fluid hydrodynamic equations, including a mutual-friction noise generated by rare backscattering events that has no counterpart in helium. We apply the theory to Coulomb-coupled quantum wires and calculate the dynamic structure factors, which contain a second-sound peak next to the plasmon doublet; the Coulomb drag resistivity, where intrawire equilibration acts as a bottleneck and turns the hydrodynamic drag into an activated temperature dependence; and the near-field heat transfer between the wires. Mode frequencies, spectral weights, linewidths, and the crossover scales of the transport coefficients are expressed through the thermodynamic properties of the liquid and a few dissipative coefficients, providing spectroscopic and transport probes of two-fluid behavior in one-dimensional quantum systems.