Large-Scale Response Theory for Gapless Lattice Fermi Systems in Low Dimensions

Abstract

This thesis develops a rigorous large-scale response theory for gapless lattice Fermi systems in low dimensions, focusing on the mathematical validity of linear response -- the Kubo formula -- for transport in gapless systems, where the absence of a spectral gap prevents the direct use of standard adiabatic theorems. After reviewing fundamental results on many-body lattice fermions, we first analyse the transport properties of non-interacting, gapless, one-dimensional quantum systems and of the edge modes of two-dimensional topological insulators. We prove the validity of the Kubo formula, in the zero-temperature and infinite-volume limit, for perturbations that are weak and slowly varying in space and time. The proof relies on expressing the real-time Duhamel series in imaginary time, which ensures its convergence uniformly in the scaling parameter and system size, at low temperatures. This representation also reveals a key cancellation in the scaling limit, linked to the emergent anomalous chiral symmetry of relativistic one-dimensional fermions. As a consequence, in the combined low-temperature and scaling limit, the linear response provides the full physical response. In particular, the method yields a dynamical proof of the quantisation of edge conductance in two-dimensional quantum Hall systems. The analysis is then extended to weakly interacting, gapless one-dimensional fermionic systems, for which we obtain explicit expressions for the response functions in terms of renormalised Fermi velocities. Here, sharp estimates for interacting Euclidean correlation functions are established via rigorous renormalisation-group methods. The asymptotic exactness of linear response persists due to a cancellation in the scaling limit of the correlations -- reminiscent of bosonisation -- derived rigorously from emergent chiral Ward identities.