We discuss how one-dimensional interacting fermion systems, which in the low-energy approximation are described by Luttinger liquid theory, can be reformulated as systems of weakly interacting particles with fractional charge and statistics. Our approach is to use Landau's phenomenological approach to Fermi liquid theory, where the quasiparticles are interpreted as adiabatically dressed fermions. In an earlier publication, the local charge carried by these excitations has been shown to be fractional. We focus here on the statistics of the quasiparticles and show that by a change of momentum variables the Landau parameters of the generalized Fermi fluid can be transformed to zero. This change in interaction is compensated by a change of the entropy function, which is consistent with the interpretation of the quasiparticles as satisfying generalized exclusion statistics.
We achieve a bosonization of one-dimensional ideal gas of particles obeying exclusion statistics $\ensuremath{\lambda}$ (so called $\ensuremath{\lambda}$ exclusons) at low temperatures, resulting in a new variant of
c=1 conformal field theory with compactified radius $R\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}=\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}\sqrt{1/\ensuremath{\lambda}}$. These ideal excluson gases exactly reproduce the low-
T critical properties of Luttinger liquids, so they can be used to characterize the fixed points of the latter. Generalized ideal gases with mutual statistics and nonideal gases with Luttinger-type interactions have also similar low-
T behavior, controlled by an effective statistics varying in a fixed-point line.
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.