A central problem in the theory of strongly correlated fermion systems, concerns the nature of their low-lying excitations. It is generally accepted that, except for special cases with symmetry breaking, three dimensional (3D) interacting Fermi systems, are well described in terms of weakly correlated quasi-particles with quantum numbers in one-toone correspondence with those identifying the excitations of a non-interacting Fermi gas. This is the basic assumption underlying the Landau theory of Fermi liquids (FL), which was originally proposed as a phenomenological description of strongly interacting fermions by Landau in early 1956[1), an then established microscopically by Nozieres and Luttinger in 1962[2]. Quite a different scenario occurs in lD interacting Fermi systems. Apart from specific models developing gaps in the excitation spectrum, most fermion systems in one dimension with repulsive interactions, do have low-lying gapless excitations, like ordinary Fermi liquids, but totally different from the quasi-particles predicted by Landau theory. The low-energy behavior of most of these lD interacting fermion systems with gapless linear excitations, can be understood in terms of few model dependent constants, which parametrize all the long-wavelength properties...
A central problem in the theory of strongly correlated fermion systems, concerns the nature of their low-lying excitations. It is generally accepted that, except for special cases with symmetry breaking, three dimensional (3D) interacting Fermi systems, are well described in terms of weakly correlated quasi-particles with quantum numbers in one-toone correspondence with those identifying the excitations of a non-interacting Fermi gas. This is the basic assumption underlying the Landau theory of Fermi liquids (FL), which was originally proposed as a phenomenological description of strongly interacting fermions by Landau in early 1956[1), an then established microscopically by Nozieres and Luttinger in 1962[2]. Quite a different scenario occurs in lD interacting Fermi systems. Apart from specific models developing gaps in the excitation spectrum, most fermion systems in one dimension with repulsive interactions, do have low-lying gapless excitations, like ordinary Fermi liquids, but totally different from the quasi-particles predicted by Landau theory. The low-energy behavior of most of these lD interacting fermion systems with gapless linear excitations, can be understood in terms of few model dependent constants, which parametrize all the long-wavelength properties...
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.
We review the progress in the theory of one-dimensional (ID) Fermi liquids which has occurred over the past decade. The usual Fermi liquid theory, based on a quasi-particle picture, breaks down in one dimension because of the Peierls divergence in the particle-hole bubble, producing anomalous dimensions of operators, and because of charge-spin separation. Both are related to the importance of scattering processes transferring finite momentum. A description of the low-energy properties of gapless 1D quantum systems can be based on the exactly solvable Luttinger model which incorporates these features, and whose correlation functions can be calculated. Special properties of the eigenvalue spectrum, parameterized by one renormalized velocity and one effective coupling constant per degree of freedom, fully describe the physics of this model. Other gapless 1D models share these properties in a low-energy subspace. The concept of a "Luttinger liquid" implies that their low-energy properties are described by an effective Luttinger model, and constitutes the universality class of these quantum systems. Once the mapping on the Luttinger model is achieved, one has an asymptotically exact solution of the 1D many-body problem. Lattice models identified as Luttinger liquids include the 1D Hubbard model off half-filling, and variants such as the t-J- or the extended Hubbard model. In addition, 1D electron-phonon systems or metals with impurities can be Luttinger liquids, as well as the edge states in the quantum Hall effect.
It is quite beyond the purpose of this book to give a comprehensive review of the modern theory of metals. I shall touch only on those topics which are related to the mainstream of this course: the problem of strong interactions. As I have noted before, strong interactions can appear as a result of renormalization, and from the aesthetic point of view this is, perhaps, the most interesting case. As we shall see in Part IV, such renormalizations are particularly strong in one-dimensional systems, where practically any interaction leads to quite dramatic effects. Therefore a one-dimensional electron gas neither undergoes a phase transition (this is forbidden due to the low dimensionality), nor behaves like a system of free electrons. On the contrary, in higher dimensions at low temperatures a system of electrons either undergoes a phase transition (superconductivity, magnetic ordering, etc.), or behaves like a free electron gas. When temperatures as low as several degrees became experimentally available, physicists discovered that an enormous amount of experimental data on normal metals can be described by the model where one neglects electron–electron interactions. This apparent miracle was explained by Landau who demonstrated that the interaction pattern drastically simplifies close to the Fermi surface. Provided the system does not undergo a symmetry breaking phase transition, all interactions except forward scattering effectively vanish on the Fermi surface and low-lying excitations carry quantum numbers of electrons. Therefore they are called quasi-particles . The meaning of the word quasi will become clear in a moment.
Non-Fermi liquid behavior In this chapter we begin the study of electronic systems that are not Landau Fermi liquids. These systems are like totalitarian societies in which the behavior of the individual is subordinated to the needs of the organization: their low-energy excitations are collective, rather than single-particle-like. A strongly collective behavior is not at all unusual in condensed matter. For example, the low energy excitations of a crystal lattice are acoustic phonons, which are collective oscillations of the atoms about their equilibrium positions. However, such examples are usually associated with a broken symmetry (translational symmetry in this case): when it comes to homogeneous electron liquids, the familiar picture of Landau's quasiparticles is so ingrained that we tend to regard any departure from it as a surprising phenomenon. Nevertheless, departures from the normal Fermi liquid pattern can and do occur in two typical scenarios: In three- and two-dimensional systems in which the electron liquid is strongly correlated , i.e., when the order of magnitude of the coulomb interaction greatly exceeds the kinetic bandwidth, In quasi-one-dimensional systems, for any strength of the interaction. A trivial example of the first scenario is offered by the three-dimensional electron liquid at very low-density. In this case the electrons form a Wigner crystal and their collective behavior arises immediately from the loss of translational symmetry. Amuch more complex example is offered by the two-dimensional electron liquid at high magnetic field. Because the kinetic energy is effectively suppressed by the magnetic field, the structure of the groundstate and the low-lying excitations is entirely controlled by the coulomb interaction.
Non-Fermi liquid behavior is found for the first time in a two-dimensional (2D) system with non-singular interactions using Haldane’s bosonization scheme. The bosonized system is solved exactly by a generalized Bogoliubov transformation. The fermion momentum distribution, calculated using a generalized Mattis-Lieb technique, exhibits a non-universal power law in the vicinity of the Fermi surface for intermediate interaction strengths. In recent years, there has been great interest in possible non-Fermi-liquid-like behavior in the ground state of two-dimensional (2D) strongly correlated fermionic systems [1]. It is well-known that in one dimension the ground state of a fermionic system with arbitrarily weak interactions is not a Fermi liquid but a state usually known as a Luttinger liquid [2]. For the 2D case, many studies have suggested that, in the limit of weak interactions, this behavior does not appear [3]. Studies of systems with a small number of particles also suggest Fermi liquid behavior in 2D [4]. Although Khveshchenko et al have found non-Fermi-liquid behavior in 2D, they worked only with a singular long-range current-current interaction [5]. The one-dimensional Luttinger liquid solution can be obtained by a bosonization
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.