An impurity in a Luttinger Liquid coupled to Ohmic-class environments
Andisheh Khedri, Antonio Štrkalj, Oded Zilberberg
Abstract
We investigate the impact of noisy environments on transport through a one dimensional interacting quantum wire containing a scattering impurity. The impurity is known to induce a metal-insulator quantum phase transition as a function of the interaction strength in the wire. By considering Ohmic-class environments (ranging from Ohmic, to sub-Ohmic and super-Ohmic cases), we elucidate the influence of fluctuations on this phase transition. Within a perturbative renormalization group approach, we show that Ohmic environments keep the phase transition intact, while sub- and super-Ohmic environments, modify it into a smooth crossover at a scale that depends on the interaction strength in the wire. The system, however, still undergoes a metal-to-insulator-like transition when moving from sub-Ohmic to super-Ohmic environment noise. We further consider realistic experimental conditions due to finite length and finite temperatures of the wire, and explore the signatures of the phase transition in the temperature dependence of the impurity-induced back-scattering electrical conductance.