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.
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 propose a method to detect a Luttinger liquid (LL)-like behavior of a quasione-dimensional ring of electrons that does not depend on a transport measurement.Rather, a Coulomb blockade-induced quantization of the persistent current and excess charge in a ring of interacting electrons are shown to depend on the interaction strength.Both the average ring charge and the persistent current are step-like functions of an applied gate voltage at low temperatures.The step positions are determined by the LL parameter α, which therefore can be directly measured.
Charge persistent currents in single-channel ballistic rings are investigated in various models of strongly correlated electrons (Wigner crystal, Luttinger liquid, Hubbard model, t–J model, and the fermion representation of the Heisenberg–Ising model). The primary objective of the survey is to compare the properties of Aharonov–Bohm oscillations for weakly and strongly correlated electrons and to formulate a set of persistent current characteristics that will unambiguously support the anomalous (departing from a Fermi liquid) behavior of one-dimensional electron systems. For this purpose the onset of the parity effect (dependence of the system response on whether the number of particles in the ring is odd or even) and various properties of the persistent current are analyzed in detail for model spinless fermions and real electrons. The influence of solitary impurities on the value and temperature dependence of the amplitude of the Aharanov–Bohm oscillations is also investigated. It is shown that the formation of a Wigner crystal (which is possible for weakly shielded Coulomb interaction) leads to a very pronounced anomalous (nonmonotonic) temperature dependence of the current in a nonideal ring. The properties of the charge current near the Mott metal–insulator transition are altered to the greatest degree by local types of electron–electron interaction.
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.
In a first part, I study the electronic transport through a one-dimensional, finite-length quantum wire of correlated electrons (Luttinger liquid) coupled at arbitrary position via tunnel barriers to two semi-infinite, one-dimensional as well as stripe-like (two-dimensional) leads, thereby bringing theory closer towards systems resembling setups realized in experiments. In particular, I compute the temperature dependence of the linear conductance of a system without bulk impurities. The appearance of new temperature scales introduced by the lengths of the overhanging parts of the leads and the wire implies a conductance function which is much more complex than the simple power-law behavior obtained in earlier approaches. My results can be used to optimize the experimental setups designed for a verification of Luttinger-liquid scaling. In a second part, I suggest a setup to study Luttinger-liquid behavior in quantum wires which allows to determine the Luttinger-liquid parameter from two independent measurements: transport through a quantum dot embedded in the wire and the charge on the dot. To this end, I identified novel Luttinger-liquid power-laws in the charging of the dot. In a more technical part, I extended an adaption of the functional renormalization group such that it can be used on correlated electrons in complex geometries like the wire-lead structures described above and arbitrary dot structures coupled to Luttinger-liquid leads.
One-dimensional conductors are a long-standing topic of research with direct applications to organic conductors and mesoscopic rings. The discovery of the ceramic high-temperature superconductors has revitalized the interest in low-dimensional charge and spin fluctuations of highly correlated electron systems. Several mechanisms proposed to explain the high-T c superconductors invoke properties of the two-dimensional Hubbard model, but probably also some one-dimensional aspects are relevant. Numerous one-dimensional models for correlated electrons have been studied with various approximate, asymptotically exact and exact methods. These results lead to the concept of Luttinger liquid for interacting electron gases without excitation gaps (metallic systems). Characteristic of Luttinger liquids are the charge and spin separation, marginal Fermi liquid properties, e.g. the absence of quasiparticles in the vicinity of the Fermi surface, nonuniversal power-law singularities in the one-particle spectral function and the related absence of a discontinuity in the momentum distribution at the Fermi level, the power-law decay of correlation functions for long times and large distances, persistent currents in finite rings, etc. Due to the peculiarities of the phase space in one dimension some of the models have sufficient conserved currents to be completely integrable. We review exact results derived within the framework of Bethe's ansatz for integrable one-dimensional models of correlated electrons. The Bethe-ansatz method is presented by explicitly showing the steps leading to the solution of the N-component electron gas interacting via a δ-function potential (repulsive and attractive interaction), which is probably the simplest model of correlated electrons. Emphasis is given to the procedure to extract the groundstate properties, the classification of states, the excitation spectrum, the thermodynamics and finite size effects, such as critical exponents of correlation functions and persistent currents. The method is then applied to numerous other models, e.g. (i) a two-band model involving attractive and repulsive potentials and crystalline fields splitting the bands, (ii) the traditional Hubbard chain with attractive and repulsive U, (iii) the degenerate Hubbard model with repulsive U, which displays a metal–insulator transition at a finite U, (iv) a two-band Hubbard model with repulsive U, (v) the traditional supersymmetric t–J model (vi) a two-band supersymmetric t–J model with band-splitting and (vii) the N-component supersymmetric t–J model. Finally, results for models with long-range interactions, in particular r-2 and sinh -2(r) potentials, are briefly reviewed.
This thesis presents theoretical studies of strongly correlated systems as well as topologically ordered systems in 1D. Non-Fermi liquid behavior characteristic of interacting 1D electron systems is investigated with an emphasis on experimentally relevant setups and observables. The existence of end Majorana fermions in a 1D p-wave superconductor subject to periodic, incommensurate and disordered potentials is studied. The Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL), a model of interacting electrons in one spatial dimension, is considered in the context of two systems of experimental interest. First, a study of the electronic properties of single-walled armchair carbon nanotubes in the presence of transverse electric and magnetic fields is presented. As a result of their effect on the band structure and electron wave functions, fields alter the nature of the (effective) Coulomb interaction in tubes. In particular, it is found that fields couple to nanotube bands (or valleys), a quantum degree of freedom inherited from the underlying graphene lattice. As revealed by a detailed TLL calculation, it is predicted that fields induce electrons to disperse into their spin, band, and charge components. Fields also provide a means of tuning the shell-filling behavior associated with short tubes. The phenomenon of charge fractionalization is investigated in a one-dimensional ring. TLL theory predicts that momentum-resolved electrons injected into the ring will fractionalize into clockwise- and counterclockwise-moving quasiparticles. As a complement to transport measurements in quantum wires connected to leads, non-invasive measures involving the magnetic field profiles around the ring are proposed. Topological aspects of 1D p-wave superconductors are explored. The intimate connection between non-trivial topology (fermions) and spontaneous symmetry breaking (spins) in one-dimension is investigated. Building on this connection, a spin ladder system endowed with vortex degrees of freedom is proposed in order to study the effects that inhomogeneous potentials have on the topological phase diagram. Periodic vortex patterns yield a rich parameter space for tuning into a topologically non-trivial phase. This analysis hinges on the development of a topological invariant based on the wave function of Majorana fermions which inhabit the ends of the system and are robust to disorder. The method is generalized to aperiodic and disordered potentials. The topological phase diagram of such systems is studied; numerical and analytic results are found to be in close agreement.