Quantum physics in one spatial dimension is remarkably rich, yet even with strong interactions and disorder, surprisingly tractable. This is due to the fact that the low-energy physics of nearly all one-dimensional systems can be cast in terms of the Luttinger liquid, a key concept that parallels that of the Fermi liquid in higher dimensions. Although there have been many theoretical proposals to use linear chains and ladders of Josephson junctions to create novel quantum phases and devices, only modest progress has been made experimentally. One major roadblock has been understanding the role of disorder in such systems. We present experimental results that establish the insulating state of linear chains of submicron Josephson junctions as Luttinger liquids pinned by random offset charges, providing a one-dimensional implementation of the Bose glass, strongly validating the quantum many-body theory of one-dimensional disordered systems. The ubiquity of such an electronic glass in Josephson-junction chains has important implications for their proposed use as a fundamental current standard, which is based on synchronization of coherent tunneling of flux quanta (quantum phase slips).
Quantum physics in one spatial dimension is remarkably rich, yet even with strong interactions and disorder, surprisingly tractable. This is due to the fact that the low-energy physics of nearly all one-dimensional systems can be cast in terms of the Luttinger liquid, a key concept that parallels that of the Fermi liquid in higher dimensions. Although there have been many theoretical proposals to use linear chains and ladders of Josephson junctions to create novel quantum phases and devices, only modest progress has been made experimentally. One major roadblock has been understanding the role of disorder in such systems. We present experimental results that establish the insulating state of linear chains of submicron Josephson junctions as Luttinger liquids pinned by random offset charges, providing a one-dimensional implementation of the Bose glass, strongly validating the quantum many-body theory of one-dimensional disordered systems. The ubiquity of such an electronic glass in Josephson-junction chains has important implications for their proposed use as a fundamental current standard, which is based on synchronization of coherent tunneling of flux quanta (quantum phase slips).
The low-temperature states of bosonic condensates exhibit fundamental quantum effects at the macroscopic scale. The combined effects of interaction and disorder in these can have drastic consequences, leading to the Mott insulator and Bose-Anderson glass. The latter is thought to describe helium-4 in porous media, cold atoms in disordered optical potentials, disordered magnetic insulators, and thin superconducting films. The prototypical Bose-Hubbard model without disorder predicts a Beresinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless quantum phase transition between superfluid and Mott insulator. Experimental implementation using arrays of Josephson junctions has been explored, however, the possibility of the insulating glass has not been considered. The ubiquity of such a phase in Josephson-junction arrays would have important implications for their proposed use as a fundamental current standard. Unlike the Mott insulator, the insulating glass is compressible, therefore AC synchronisation of charge may not be possible. We have measured critical voltages for a large number of simple chains of sub-micron Josephson junctions with significantly varying energy scales. We observe universal scaling of critical voltage with single-junction Bloch bandwidth. Our measurements reveal a localisation length exponent that steepens with Luttinger parameter, arising from precursor fluctuations as one approaches the Bose glass-superfluid quantum phase transition. This contrasts with the fixed exponent found for classical pinning of charge density waves, vortex lattices, and disordered spin systems, and is in excellent agreement with the quantum theory of one-dimensional disordered bosonic insulators. We thereby demonstrate a unique signature of the charged Bose glass in insulating Josephson-junction chains.
Disordered superconductors in low dimensions provide an exemplary manifestation for the role of quantum fluctuations in a many-body system. Specifically in Josephson arrays with comparable Josephson and charging energies (EJ∼EC), disorder tends to change the nature of the paradigmatic Superconductor-Insulator Transition (SIT) and potentially leads to formation of multiple distinct phases. We address this problem in a model of a two-legged Josephson ladder subjected to a wide spatial distribution of its parameters along the legs. In contrast, we assume the system to have a perfect Z2 symmetry to interchange between the legs, and investigate the effects of spatial randomness which preserves this symmetry in the strong-disorder limit. To this end, we apply a strong randomness real-space renormalization group technique and explore the resulting phase diagram. We identify three disorder-dominated phases, including an intermediate phase between a disordered superconductor and a disordered insulator. The latter insulating phase can be mapped to a XY spin-chain in a spin glass phase, while the intermediate phase turns out to be a Bose glass.
Due to the peculiar non-fermi liquid of one dimensional systems, disorder has particularly strong effects. We show that such systems belong to the more general class of disordered quantum solids. We discuss the physics of such disordered interacting systems and the methods that allows to treat them. In addition to, by now standard renormalization group methods, We explain how a simple variational approach allows to treat these problems even in case when the RG fails. We discuss various physical realizations of such disordered quantum solids both in one and higher dimensions (Wigner crystal, Bose glass). We investigate in details the interesting example of a disordered Mott insulator and argue that intermediate disorder can lead to a novel phase, the Mott glass, intermediate between a Mott and and Anderson insulator.
We calculate the correlation functions and the dc conductivity of Luttinger liquid superlattices, modelled by a repeated pattern of interacting and free Luttinger liquids. In a specific realization, where the interacting subsystem is a Hubbard chain, the system exhibits a rich phase diagram with four different phases: two metals and two compressible insulators. In general, we find that the effective low-energy description amalgamates features of both types of liquids in proportion to their spatial extent, suggesting the interesting possibility of `engineered' Luttinger liquids. In recent years, new experimental techniques have made it possible to grow nanostructures which are topologically one-dimensional, such as quantum wires and Carbon nanotubes. However, care must be taken when invoking existing models to discuss their electronic properties, since inhomogeneities must be taken into account in a fundamental way. Consider, for instance, the Luttinger liquid (LL), which is the standard model for low-energy phenomena involving interacting electrons in one dimension [1]. The absence of conductance renormalization in long high-mobility GaAs wires [2] has been explained in terms of a usual LL (representing the wire) in contact with a non-interacting LL at each of its ends (representing the Fermi liquid leads); that is, overall, the system can be thought of as an inhomogeneous Luttinger Liquid (ILL). LLs with different inhomogeneity profiles have also been used in the context of the fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE), to describe transitions between edge states at different fillings [3, 4], or between an edge state connected to a Fermi liquid [5]. A different class of inhomogeneous systems is represented by superlattices (SLs) and multilayers. By varying the relative th...
One-dimensional free fermions and hard-core bosons are often considered to be equivalent. Indeed, when restricted to nearest-neighbor hopping on a chain, the particles cannot exchange themselves, and therefore hardly experience their own statistics. Apart from the off-diagonal correlations which depend on the so-called Jordan-Wigner string, real-space observables are similar for free fermions and hard-core bosons on a chain. Interestingly, by coupling only two chains, thus forming a two-leg ladder, particle exchange becomes allowed and leads to a totally different physics between free fermions and hard-core bosons. Using a combination of analytical (strong coupling, field theory, renormalization group) and numerical (quantum Monte Carlo, density-matrix renormalization group) approaches, we study the apparently simple but nontrivial model of hard-core bosons hopping in a two-leg ladder geometry. At half filling, while a band insulator appears for fermions at large interchain hopping ${t}_{\ensuremath{\perp}}>2t$ only, a Mott gap opens up for bosons as soon as ${t}_{\ensuremath{\perp}}\ensuremath{\ne}0$ through a Kosterlitz-Thouless transition. Away from half filling, the situation is even more interesting since a gapless Luttinger liquid mode emerges in the symmetric sector with a nontrivial filling-dependent Luttinger parameter $1/2\ensuremath{\leqslant}{K}_{s}\ensuremath{\leqslant}1$. Consequences for experiments in cold atoms and spin ladders in a magnetic field, as well as disorder effects, are discussed. In particular, a quantum phase transition is expected at finite disorder strength between a one-dimensional superfluid and an insulating Bose glass phase.
We investigate Luttinger liquid superlattices, periodic structures composed of two kinds of one-dimensional systems of interacting electrons. We calculate several properties of the low-energy sector: the effective charge and spin velocities, the compressibility, various correlation functions, the Landauer conductance, and the Drude weight. The low-energy properties are subsumed into effective parameters, much like homogeneous one-dimensional systems. A generic result is the weighted average nature of these parameters, in proportion to the spatial extent of the underlying subunits, pointing to the possibility of ``engineered'' structures. As a specific realization, we consider a one-dimensional Hubbard superlattice, which consists of a periodic arrangement of two long Hubbard chains with different coupling constants and different hopping amplitudes. This system exhibits a rich phase diagram with several phases, both metallic and insulating. We have found that gapless insulating phases are present over a wide range of parameters.