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arXiv:2210.06306 · Nature Communications

Thermal disruption of a Luttinger liquid

Danyel Cavazos-Cavazos, Ruwan Senaratne, Aashish Kafle, Randall G. Hulet

Published May 31, 2023• 15 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract The Tomonaga–Luttinger liquid (TLL) theory describes the low-energy excitations of strongly correlated one-dimensional (1D) fermions. In the past years, a number of studies have provided a detailed understanding of this universality class. More recently, theoretical investigations that go beyond the standard low-temperature, linear-response TLL regime have been developed. While these provide a basis for understanding the dynamics of the spin-incoherent Luttinger liquid, there are few experimental investigations in this regime. Here we report the observation of a thermally induced, spin-incoherent Luttinger liquid in a 6Li atomic Fermi gas confined to 1D. We use Bragg spectroscopy to measure the suppression of spin-charge separation and the decay of correlations as the temperature is increased. Our results probe the crossover between the coherent and incoherent regimes of the Luttinger liquid and elucidate the roles of the charge and the spin degrees of freedom in this regime.

DOI
10.1038/s41467-023-38767-0

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Abstract The Tomonaga–Luttinger liquid (TLL) theory describes the low-energy excitations of strongly correlated one-dimensional (1D) fermions. In the past years, a number of studies have provided a detailed understanding of this universality class. More recently, theoretical investigations that go beyond the standard low-temperature, linear-response TLL regime have been developed. While these provide a basis for understanding the dynamics of the spin-incoherent Luttinger liquid, there are few experimental investigations in this regime. Here we report the observation of a thermally induced, spin-incoherent Luttinger liquid in a 6Li atomic Fermi gas confined to 1D. We use Bragg spectroscopy to measure the suppression of spin-charge separation and the decay of correlations as the temperature is increased. Our results probe the crossover between the coherent and incoherent regimes of the Luttinger liquid and elucidate the roles of the charge and the spin degrees of freedom in this regime.
Interacting fermions that are confined to 1D can only support collective excitations and are thus governed by the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) theory, in which collective excitations decouple into charge and spin modes instead of particle-like excitations. Over the course of this work we have realized analog quantum simulations of the TLL model using a 6-Li atomic system. By taking advantage of a magnetic Feshbach resonance we readily tune the interactions of the sample so that we can transition from a non-interacting gas to either a strongly repulsive or a strongly attractive system, and probe the dynamics of the system within these regimes. By using low-momentum Bragg spectroscopy we were able to measure and characterize the spin-charge separation of a TLL. Our work also presents the first observation of spin and charge density waves that are separately excited from the ground state through a Bragg perturbation. The observed dynamical response function of the spin and charge excitations remarkably captures both the universal behavior of the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid, as well as the non-linear effects related to the band curvature effect in the charge sector and the back-scattering interaction effect in the spin sector. Up to now considering higher-order corrections to the linear dispersion in either the spin or charge degrees of freedom had remained out of reach for both theory and experiment. In addition to this, we also realized a spin-incoherent Luttinger liquid and characterized its temperature crossover between the coherent and incoherent regimes. On the attractive interactions regime we observe an inversion of spin-charge separation, and we also have seen preliminary signatures of confinement-induced 1D bound states.
At low temperature, collective excitations of one-dimensional (1D) interacting fermions exhibit spin-charge separation, a unique feature predicted by the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) theory, but a rigorous understanding remains challenging. Using the thermodynamic Bethe ansatz (TBA) formalism, we analytically derive universal properties of a 1D repulsive spin-1/2 Fermi gas with arbitrary interaction strength. We show how spin-charge separation emerges from the exact TBA formalism, and how it is disrupted by the interplay between the two degrees of freedom that brings us beyond the TLL paradigm. Based on the exact low-lying excitation spectra, we further evaluate the spin and charge dynamical structure factors (DSFs). The peaks of the DSFs exhibit distinguishable propagating velocities of spin and charge as functions of interaction strength, which can be observed by Bragg spectroscopy with ultracold atoms.
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.
In a one-dimensional (1D) system of interacting electrons, excitations of spin and charge travel at different speeds, according to the theory of a Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) at low energies. However, the clear observation of this spin-charge separation is an ongoing challenge experimentally. We have fabricated an electrostatically gated 1D system in which we observe spin-charge separation and also the predicted power-law suppression of tunneling into the 1D system. The spin-charge separation persists even beyond the low-energy regime where the TLL approximation should hold. TLL effects should therefore also be important in similar, but shorter, electrostatically gated wires, where interaction effects are being studied extensively worldwide.
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.
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.