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arXiv:2104.07751 · Journal of Physics A Mathematical and Theoretical

Breaking of Huygens–Fresnel principle in inhomogeneous Tomonaga–Luttinger liquids

Marek Gluza, Per Moosavi, Spyros Sotiriadis

Published Nov 16, 2021• 19 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract Tomonaga–Luttinger liquids (TLLs) can be used to effectively describe one-dimensional quantum many-body systems such as ultracold atoms, charges in nanowires, superconducting circuits, and gapless spin chains. Their properties are given by two parameters, the propagation velocity and the Luttinger parameter. Here we study inhomogeneous TLLs where these are promoted to functions of position and demonstrate that they profoundly affect the dynamics: in general, besides curving the light cone, we show that propagation is no longer ballistically localized to the light-cone trajectories, different from standard homogeneous TLLs. Specifically, if the Luttinger parameter depends on position, the dynamics features pronounced spreading into the light cone, which cannot be understood via a simple superposition of waves as in the Huygens–Fresnel principle. This is the case for ultracold atoms in a parabolic trap, which serves as our main motivation, and we discuss possible experimental observations in such systems.

DOI
10.1088/1751-8121/ac39cc

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Abstract Tomonaga–Luttinger liquids (TLLs) can be used to effectively describe one-dimensional quantum many-body systems such as ultracold atoms, charges in nanowires, superconducting circuits, and gapless spin chains. Their properties are given by two parameters, the propagation velocity and the Luttinger parameter. Here we study inhomogeneous TLLs where these are promoted to functions of position and demonstrate that they profoundly affect the dynamics: in general, besides curving the light cone, we show that propagation is no longer ballistically localized to the light-cone trajectories, different from standard homogeneous TLLs. Specifically, if the Luttinger parameter depends on position, the dynamics features pronounced spreading into the light cone, which cannot be understood via a simple superposition of waves as in the Huygens–Fresnel principle. This is the case for ultracold atoms in a parabolic trap, which serves as our main motivation, and we discuss possible experimental observations in such systems.
The light-cone spreading of entanglement and correlation is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of homogeneous extended quantum systems. Here we point out that a class of inhomogenous Luttinger liquids (those with a uniform Luttinger parameter K K ) at low energy display the universal phenomenon of curved light cones: gapless excitations propagate along the null geodesics of the metric ds^2 = dx^2 - v(x)^2 dt^2 d s 2 = d x 2 − v ( x ) 2 d t 2 , with v(x) v ( x ) being the calculable spatial dependent velocity induced by the inhomogeneity. We confirm our findings with explicit analytic and numerical calculations both in- and out-of-equilibrium for a Tonks-Girardeau gas in a harmonic potential and in lattice systems with artificially tuned hamiltonian density.
Quantum fluctuations can disrupt long-range order in one-dimensional systems and replace it with the universal paradigm of the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL), a critical phase of matter characterized by power-law decaying correlations and linearly dispersing excitations. Using a Rydberg quantum simulator, we study how TLL physics manifests in the low-energy properties of a spin chain, interacting under either the ferromagnetic or the antiferromagnetic dipolar XY Hamiltonian. Following quasiadiabatic preparation, we directly observe the power-law decay of spin-spin correlations in real space, allowing us to extract the Luttinger parameter. In the presence of an impurity, the chain exhibits tunable Friedel oscillations of the local magnetization. Moreover, by utilizing a quantum quench, we directly probe the propagation of correlations, which exhibit a light-cone structure related to the linear sound mode of the underlying TLL. Our measurements demonstrate the influence of the long-range dipolar interactions, renormalizing the parameters of TLL with respect to the case of nearest-neighbor interactions. Finally, comparison to numerical simulations exposes the high sensitivity of TLLs to doping and finite-size effects.
We derive the dynamical structure factor for an inhomogeneous Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) as can be formed in a confined strongly interacting one-dimensional gas. In view of the current experimental progress in the field, we provide a simple analytic expression for the light-scattering cross section, requiring only the knowledge of the density dependence of the ground-state energy as it can be extracted, e.g., from exact or quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) techniques and a Thomas-Fermi description. We apply the result to the case of one-dimensional quantum bosonic gases with dipolar interaction in a harmonic trap, using an energy functional deduced from QMC computations. We find a universal scaling behavior peculiar to the TLL, a signature that can be probed eventually by Bragg spectroscopy in experimental realizations of such systems.
We experimentally investigate the quantum criticality and Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) behavior within one-dimensional (1D) ultracold atomic gases. Based on the measured density profiles at different temperatures, the universal scaling laws of thermodynamic quantities are observed. The quantum critical regime and the relevant crossover temperatures are determined through the double-peak structure of the specific heat. In the TLL regime, we obtain the Luttinger parameter by probing sound propagation. Furthermore, a characteristic power-law behavior emerges in the measured momentum distributions of the 1D ultracold gas, confirming the existence of the TLL.
The one-dimensional (1D) Yang-Gaudin model--an integrable δδδ-function interacting Fermi gas, serves as a paradigm in quantum many-body physics, encompassing phenomena from spin-charge separation to the Luther-Emery liquid. However, a consistent description of the Luther-Emery liquid and the Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO)-like pairing states in the 1D attractive Fermi gas remains elusive. In this work, we develop a universal Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) theory to describe the FFLO state both for the case of weak and strong binding between fermions of opposite spins. We rigorously derive a low-energy effective Hamiltonian using bosonization, revealing the emergence of a two-component TLL: one exhibiting spin-charge coupling in the weak binding regime, and another featuring charge-charge separation in the strong binding regime. For the weak binding regime, we further derive renormalization-group equations for the sine-Gordon term in the spin sector and show that this term undergoes a relevant-irrelevant phase transition driven by the magnetic field. We further analyze the dynamical correlation functions of the FFLO pairing state based on the effective Hamiltonian we constructed. Finally, we discuss experiments using ultracold atoms to elucidate the Luther-Emery liquid behavior and the subtle phenomena of spin-charge coupling and charge-charge separation.
The concept of Tomonaga--Luttinger liquids (TLL) on the basis of the free-boson models is ubiquitous in theoretical descriptions of low-energy properties in one-dimensional quantum systems. In this work, we develop a squeezed-field path-integral description for gapless one-dimensional systems beyond the free-boson picture of the TLL paradigm. In the squeezed-field description, the parameter of the Bogoliubov transformation for the TL Hamiltonian becomes a dynamical squeezing field, and its fluctuations give rise to corrections to the free-boson results. We derive an effective nonlinear Lagrangian describing the dispersion relation of the squeezing field, and interactions between the excitations of the TLL and the squeezing modes. Using the effective Lagrangian, we analyze the imaginary-time correlation function of a vertex operator in the non-interacting limit. We show that a side-band branch emerges due to the fluctuation of the squeezing field, in addition to the standard branch of the free-boson model of the TLL paradigm. Furthermore, we perturbatively analyze the spectral function of the density fluctuations for an ultracold Bose gas in one dimension. We evaluate the renormalized values of the phase velocities and spectral weights of the TLL and side-band branches due to the interaction between the TLL and the squeezing modes. At zero temperature, the renormalized dispersion relations are linear in the momentum, but at nonzero temperatures, these acquire a nonlinear dependence on the momentum due to the thermal population of the excitation branches.