We show that in a ring-shaped Luttinger Liquid (LL) in contact with an electron reservoir --- the chemical potential in the ring being controlled by a gate voltage
Vg --- both the average ring charge and the persistent current in the ring are step-like functions of
Vg at low temperatures. The step positions are determined by the LL parameter
α=vF/s, which therefore can be directly measured. We study electrons both with and without spin, taking into account long-range interactions in the ring.
Theoretical studies suggest that an interacting one-dimensional electron system does not behave as a Fermi liquid. Instead, it is predicted to form a Luttinger liquid characterized e.g. by the absence of fermionic quasiparticles and interaction-dependent power-laws for transport quantities. So far, however, only a limited number of experiments have provided evidence for Luttinger liquid behavior. In this thesis we consider alternative methods to detect electronic correlations in one-dimensional electron systems based on our calculations of persistent currents and quantization of charge in ballistic single channel rings. The persistent current in an isolated impurity-free Luttinger liquid ring is found to be the same as for a system of non-interacting electrons. In contrast, a Luttinger liquid behavior is revealed if the ring is weakly connected to an electron reservoir and capacitively coupled to a gate electrode. The persistent current and the average charge in the ring are shown to change in a stepwise manner with the gate voltage at low temperatures. Both the step positions and the crossover temperatures are determined by the Luttinger liquid correlation parameter .alpha.(.alpha.c) which therefore can be measured. When a potential barrier is incorporated into the ring, the presence of strong interactions between electrons leads to a suppression of the persistent current and a change in its temperature dependence. A sharp maximum of the current is predicted to occur as a function of temperature. When two barriers are introduced into the ring, the possibility of resonant tunneling for the persistent current opens up. Two kinds of resonant behavior are discovered in the closed geometry: a current independent of the barrier transparency and a current analogous to the one with a single potential barrier. The persistent current in a ring containing a gas of fractionally charged excitations obeying fractional exclusion statistics is also studied. At finite temperatures, anomalous oscillations of the current are predicted as a manifestation of the statistics of the quasiparticles.
We suggest an experiment to study Luttinger liquid behavior in a one-dimensional nanostructure, avoiding the usual complications associated with transport measurements. The proposed setup consists of a quantum box, biased by a gate voltage, and side coupled to a quantum wire by a point contact. Close to the degeneracy points of the Coulomb blockaded box, and in the presence of a magnetic field sufficiently strong to spin polarize the electrons, the setup can be described as a Luttinger liquid interacting with an effective Kondo impurity. Using exact nonperturbative techniques, we predict that the differential capacitance of the box will exhibit distinctive Luttinger liquid scaling with temperature and gate voltage.
We consider a ring of strongly interacting electrons connected to two external leads by tunnel junctions. By studying the positions of conductance resonances as a function of gate voltage and magnetic flux, the interaction parameter
g can be determined experimentally. For a finite ring the minimum conductance is strongly influenced by device geometry and electron-electron interactions. In particular, if the tunnel junctions are close to one another, the interaction-related orthogonality catastrophe is suppressed and the valley current is unexpectedly large.
The persistent current and charge stiffness of a one-dimensional Luttinger liquid on a ring threaded by a magnetic flux are calculated by Monte Carlo simulation. By changing the random impurity potential strength and the electron-electron interaction, we see a crossover behavior between weak- and strong-impurity limits. For weak-impurity potentials, interactions enhance impurity effects, that is, interactions decrease the current and the stiffness. On the other hand, interactions tend to screen impurities when the impurity potential is strong. Temperature dependence of the persistent current and the charge stiffness shows a peak at a characteristic temperature, consistent with a recent single-impurity study.
The persistent current
(I) of the spinless-electron Luttinger liquid is calculated by numerical microscopic methods in the continuous one-dimensional ring containing a weak link with transmission amplitude ${\stackrel{\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}}{t}}_{{k}_{F}}⪡1$. The electrons interact via a screened interaction of range
d. If $d\ensuremath{\lesssim}1/2{k}_{F}$, the interaction modifies the transmission as ${t}_{{k}_{F}}\ensuremath{\simeq}{\stackrel{\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}}{t}}_{{k}_{F}}{N}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\alpha}}$ and the current as $LI/e{v}_{F}\ensuremath{\simeq}|{\stackrel{\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}}{t}}_{{k}_{F}}|{N}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\alpha}}$, where
N is the electron number,
L the ring length,
N/L a fixed density, and $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ depends on the interaction in accord with the renormalization-group (RG) theory. Unlike our results, the RG theory predicts for a finite
d the power laws ${t}_{{k}_{F}}\ensuremath{\simeq}{\stackrel{\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}}{t}}_{{k}_{F}}{(L/d)}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\alpha}}$ and $LI/e{v}_{F}\ensuremath{\simeq}|{\stackrel{\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}}{t}}_{{k}_{F}}|{(L/d)}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\alpha}}$, both depending on two interaction parameters,
d and $\ensuremath{\alpha}$. To explain why our results depend solely on $\ensuremath{\alpha}$, we show analytically that the interaction-matrix elements depend only on $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ (not on
d) when $d\ensuremath{\lesssim}1/2{k}_{F}$. As
d exceeds
1/2kF, our result for
LI/evF starts to depend on
d as well and likely approaches the result $LI/e{v}_{F}\ensuremath{\simeq}|{\stackrel{\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}}{t}}_{{k}_{F}}|{(L/d)}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\alpha}}$ in the limit
L⪢d⪢1/2kF, not feasible by our numerical methods.