Low-temperature properties of 3D interacting fermion systems are well described by Landau's theory of Fermi liquids; for reviews see, e.g. [183, 184]. It involves only excitations of the system around the Fermi surface on energy scales small compared to the Fermi energy. Excitations are well described by quasi-particles which are in one-to-one correspondence with the bare particles. The bare-particle interaction does not break the qualitative picture of non-interacting system, but renormalizes the dynamical characteristics (the effective mass and the pair interaction) of quasi-particles. Within the microscopic Green function formalism, the existence of quasi-particles is equivalent to assuming that the self-energy correction Σ( k , ω) is regular (has only short-range contributions in time and space) close to the Fermi surface. The lifetime of quasi-particles τ α(ε k −ε F ) −2 is long enough to consider them as well-defined eigenstates over long time-scales. The momentum occupation number of the bare particles exhibits a sharp discontinuity when crossing the Fermi momentum. The charge and spin degrees of freedom of quasi-particle always travel together. The Landau theory breaks down in 1D systems of interacting fermions which have a very specific Fermi surface consisting of two points ± k F . In such systems, the self-energy Σ( k , ω) no longer possesses the analytic properties required for introducing quasi-particles. In contrast to Fermi liquids, the momentum occupation number of the bare particles in the ground state is continuous at the Fermi momentum. Moreover, the charge and spin excitations are separated.
Low-temperature properties of 3D interacting fermion systems are well described by Landau's theory of Fermi liquids; for reviews see, e.g. [183, 184]. It involves only excitations of the system around the Fermi surface on energy scales small compared to the Fermi energy. Excitations are well described by quasi-particles which are in one-to-one correspondence with the bare particles. The bare-particle interaction does not break the qualitative picture of non-interacting system, but renormalizes the dynamical characteristics (the effective mass and the pair interaction) of quasi-particles. Within the microscopic Green function formalism, the existence of quasi-particles is equivalent to assuming that the self-energy correction Σ( k , ω) is regular (has only short-range contributions in time and space) close to the Fermi surface. The lifetime of quasi-particles τ α(ε k −ε F ) −2 is long enough to consider them as well-defined eigenstates over long time-scales. The momentum occupation number of the bare particles exhibits a sharp discontinuity when crossing the Fermi momentum. The charge and spin degrees of freedom of quasi-particle always travel together. The Landau theory breaks down in 1D systems of interacting fermions which have a very specific Fermi surface consisting of two points ± k F . In such systems, the self-energy Σ( k , ω) no longer possesses the analytic properties required for introducing quasi-particles. In contrast to Fermi liquids, the momentum occupation number of the bare particles in the ground state is continuous at the Fermi momentum. Moreover, the charge and spin excitations are separated.
For pure fermionic systems, and in the absence of symmetry breaking (e.g. magnetism, superconductivity, …), two types of metallic phases are well established: (i) the “normal” Fermi liquid phase in d = 3 presented in Chapters 12 and 19 via the response and the Green functions techniques; and (ii) the “anomalous” Luttinger liquid phase in d = 1 originally formulated with the bosonization technique by which the fermionic operators are represented in terms of “bosonic” density operators (Luther and Peschel (1974); Haldane (1981)) with the exact solution (Mattis and Lieb (1965)) of the Tomonaga–Luttinger model (Tomonaga (1950); Luttinger (1963)) discussed inmany reviews and books (see for instance the book by Giamarchi (2004)). Here, to stress similarities and differences between the Fermi liquid and the Luttinger liquid, we will follow the alternative route of response and Green functions techniques (Dzyaloshinskii and Larkin (1973), Di Castro and Metzner (1991), Metzner et al. (1998)) and add a few comments on the renormalization group approach (Metzner and Di Castro (1993)). As we have seen in Chapters 12 and 19, the Fermi liquid is described asymptotically by the free low-lying single-particle excitations, i.e., the quasiparticles with a zero-kelvin discontinuous occupation number in momentum space n k (see Eq. (18.54)) at a well defined Fermi surface (k = k F ): where here k F> and k F< indicate the limit k → k F from above and below. This discontinuity still marks the Fermi surface in the interacting system. The finite reduction of the single-particle spectral weight z kF with respect to the Fermi gas (z kF = 1) is given by the finite (i.e. non-critical) “wavefunction renormalization” (see Eq. (18.94)). The presence of the discontinuity at the Fermi surface, together with the Pauli principle, compel the inverse quasiparticle lifetime to be τ −1 ≈ max( T 2 , ϵ 2 ), where _ is the deviation of the energy of the quasiparticle from the Fermi energy. The energy uncertainty ħτ −1 due to the finite lifetime of a quasiparticle near the Fermi surface is small compared to its energy ϵ , and the quasiparticle concept is well defined. All the momentum transferring scattering processes become asymptotically ineffective, as derived phenomenologically in Chapter 12 and confirmed microscopically in Chapter 19.
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.
Abstract. I give a brief introduction to Luttinger liquids. Luttinger liquids are paramagnetic one-dimensional metals without Landau quasi-particle excitations. The elementary excitations are collective charge and spin modes, leading to charge-spin separation. Correlation functions exhibit power-law behavior. All physical properties can be calculated, e.g. by bosonization, and depend on three parameters only: the renormalized coupling constant Kρ, and the charge and spin velocities. I also discuss the stability of Luttinger liquids with respect to temperature, interchain coupling, lattice effects and phonons, and list important open problems. WHAT IS A LUTTINGER LIQUID ANYWAY? Ordinary, three-dimensional metals are described by Fermi liquid theory. Fermi liquid theory is about the importance of electron-electron interactions in metals. It states that there is a 1:1-correspondence between the low-energy excitations of a free Fermi gas, and those of an interacting electron liquid which are termed “quasiparticles” [1]. Roughly speaking, the combination of the Pauli principle with low excitation energy (e.g. T ≪ EF) and the large phase space available in 3D, produces
We present numerical evidence for a paradigm in one-dimensional interacting fermion systems, whose phenomenology has traits of both Luttinger liquids and Fermi liquids. This state, dubbed a quasi-Fermi liquid, possesses a discontinuity in its fermion occupation number at the Fermi momentum. The excitation spectrum presents particlelike quasiparticles and absence of holelike quasiparticles, giving rise instead to edge singularities. Such a state is realized in a one-dimensional spinless fermion lattice Hamiltonian by fine-tuning the interactions to a regime where they become irrelevant in the renormalization group sense. We show, using uniform infinite matrix products states and finite-entanglement scaling analysis, that the system ground state is characterized by a Luttinger parameter K=1 and a discontinuous jump in the fermion occupation number. We support the characterization with calculations of the spectral function that show a particle-hole asymmetry reflected in the existence of well-defined Landau quasiparticles above the Fermi level and edge singularities without the associated quasiparticles below. These results indicate that the quasi-Fermi liquid paradigm can be realized beyond the low-energy perturbative realm.
The Fermi liquid is perhaps the most familiar quantum many-body state of solid state physics; we met it briefly in Section 16.2.2. It is the generic state of fermions at nonzero density, and is found in all metals. Its basic characteristics can already be understood in a simple free fermion picture. Noninteracting fermions occupy the lowest energy single-particle states, consistent with the exclusion principle. This leads to the fundamental concept of the Fermi surface: a surface in momentum space separating the occupied and empty single fermion states. The lowest energy excitations then consist of quasiparticle excitations which are particle-like outside the Fermi surface, and hole-like inside the Fermi surface. Landau's Fermi liquid theory is a careful justification for the stability of this simple picture in the presence of interactions between fermions. Just as we found in Chapters 5 and 7 for the quantum Ising and rotor models, interaction corrections modify the wavefunction of the quasiparticle and so introduce a quasiparticle residue A ; however, they do not destabilize the integrity of the quasiparticle, as we review in Section 18.1. The purpose of this chapter is to describe two paradigms of symmetry breaking quantum transitions in Fermi liquids. In the first class, studied in Section 18.2, the broken symmetry is related to the point-group symmetry of the crystal, while translational symmetry is preserved; consequently, the order parameter resides at zero wavevector. In the second class, studied in Section 18.3, the order parameter is at a finite wavevector, and so translational symmetry is also broken.
In periodic systems of interacting electrons, Fermi and Luttinger surfaces refer to the locations within the Brillouin zone of poles and zeros, respectively, of the single-particle Green's function at zero energy and temperature. Such difference in analytic properties underlies the emergence of well-defined quasiparticles close to a Fermi surface, in contrast to their supposed non-existence close to a Luttinger surface, where the single-particle density-of-states vanishes at zero energy. We here show that, contrary to such common belief, coherent `quasiparticles' do exist also approaching a Luttinger surface in compressible interacting electron systems. Thermodynamic and dynamic properties of such 'quasiparticles' are just those of conventional ones. For instance, they yield well defined quantum oscillations in Luttinger's surface and linear in temperature specific heat, which is striking given the vanishing density of states of physical electrons, but actually not uncommon in strongly correlated materials.