We have recently calculated exact nonequilibrium quantum transport properties through a point contact in a Luttinger liquid. Using a particular quasiparticle basis of the Hilbert space dictated by integrability, we here compute explicitly the exact I(V) characteristic and conductance out of equilibrium as a function of driving voltage V and temperature T. These are described by universal scaling functions of two variables, the scaled point-contact interaction strength, and V/T. The differential-conductance curve as a function of the interaction strength broadens significantly as V/T is increased, and develops a pronounced maximum at a (universal) critical value (eV/${\mathit{k}}_{\mathit{B}}$T)=7.188 68. . .. In addition, we derive an exact duality between strong and weak backscattering. The theory presented here has recently been realized experimentally in resonant tunneling-transport experiments between edge states in fractional quantum Hall effect devices. In this context the exact duality is between electron tunneling and Laughlin-quasiparticle tunneling.
We have recently calculated exact nonequilibrium quantum transport properties through a point contact in a Luttinger liquid. Using a particular quasiparticle basis of the Hilbert space dictated by integrability, we here compute explicitly the exact I(V) characteristic and conductance out of equilibrium as a function of driving voltage V and temperature T. These are described by universal scaling functions of two variables, the scaled point-contact interaction strength, and V/T. The differential-conductance curve as a function of the interaction strength broadens significantly as V/T is increased, and develops a pronounced maximum at a (universal) critical value (eV/kBT)=7.188 68. . .. In addition, we derive an exact duality between strong and weak backscattering. The theory presented here has recently been realized experimentally in resonant tunneling-transport experiments between edge states in fractional quantum Hall effect devices. In this context the exact duality is between electron tunneling and Laughlin-quasiparticle tunneling.
The conductance for tunneling through an impurity in a Luttinger liquid is described by a universal scaling function. We compute this scaling function exactly, by using the thermodynamic Bethe ansatz and a kinetic (Boltzmann) equation. This model has been proposed to describe resonant tunneling through a point contact between two $\ensuremath{\nu}\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}=\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}1/3$ quantum Hall edges. Recent experiments on quantum Hall devices agree well with our exact results. We also derive the exact conductance and I(V) curve, out of equilibrium, in this fully interacting system.
A point contact in a Luttinger liquid couples left- and right-moving channels, producing shot noise. We calculate exactly the dc shot noise at zero temperature in the out-of-equilibrium steady state where current is flowing. Integrability ensures the existence of a quasiparticle basis where scattering is ``one by one'' off the point contact, enabling us to generalize the Landauer approach to shot noise to this interacting model. Experiments in a fractional quantum Hall effect device should test our results, providing a clear signal of the fractional charge of the Laughlin quasiparticles.
We study a quantum point contact in a quantum spin Hall insulator. It has recently been shown that the Luttinger liquid theory of such a structure maps to the theory of a weak link in a Luttinger liquid with spin with Luttinger liquid parameters ${g}_{\ensuremath{\rho}}=1/{g}_{\ensuremath{\sigma}}=g<1$. We show that for weak interactions, 1/2<g<1, the pinch-off of the point contact as a function of gate voltage is controlled by a novel quantum critical point, which is a realization of a nontrivial intermediate fixed point found previously in the Luttinger liquid model with spin. We predict that the dependence of the conductance on gate voltage near the pinch-off transition for different temperatures collapses onto a universal curve described by a crossover scaling function associated with that fixed point. We compute the conductance and critical exponents of the critical point as well as the universal scaling function in solvable limits, which include $g=1\ensuremath{-}ϵ$, g=1/2+ϵ, and g=1/3. These results, along with a general scaling analysis, provide an overall picture of the critical behavior as a function of g. In addition, we analyze the structure of the four-terminal conductance of the point contact in the weak tunneling and weak backscattering limits. We find that different components of the conductance can have different temperature dependences. In particular, we identify a skew conductance GXY, which we predict vanishes as ${T}^{\ensuremath{\gamma}}$ with $\ensuremath{\gamma}\ensuremath{\ge}2$. This behavior is a direct consequence of the unique edge state structure of the quantum spin Hall insulator. Finally, we show that for strong interactions, g<1/2, the presence of spin nonconserving spin-orbit interactions leads to a novel time-reversal-symmetry breaking insulating phase. In this phase, the transport is carried by spinless chargons and chargeless spinons. These lead to nontrivial correlations in the low frequency shot noise. Implications for experiments on HgCdTe quantum well structures will be discussed.
Even-denominator fractional quantum Hall (FQH) states can be viewed as topological superconductors of composite fermions, supporting a charged chiral mode and ∣Ccf∣ neutral Majorana modes set by the Chern number Ccf. Despite ongoing efforts, distinguishing the many competing paired phases remains an open problem. In this work, we propose a unified theory of charge transport across a quantum point contact (QPC) for general paired FQH states described by an so(N)1×u(1) conformal field theory. We derive the boundary effective action for an arbitrary number of Majorana fermions N=∣Ccf∣ and develop a non-perturbative instanton approximation to describe tunneling processes. We establish a weak-strong duality relating strong quasiparticle tunneling to weak electron tunneling. We calculate the scaling dimensions of the tunneling operators and demonstrate that while the weak-coupling fixed point is generally unstable, the strong-coupling fixed point is stable for physically relevant filling fractions and number of Majorana fermions. These transport exponents provide a distinct experimental fingerprint to identify the topological phases of even-denominator FQH states.
We study nonequilibrium noise in chiral Luttinger liquids using the Landauer-Buttiker scattering approach, obtaining the current and voltage noise spectrum for a four-terminal measurement scheme. Experimental consequences of the tunneling of charges are present in the four-terminal measurement of both the low-frequency shot noise (\ensuremath{\omega} near 0), and the high-frequency Josephson noise (\ensuremath{\omega} near ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\omega}}}_{\mathit{J}}$=e∗V/\ensuremath{\Elzxh}). Within perturbation theory, an algebraic singularity is present at the Josephson frequency ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\omega}}}_{\mathit{J}}$=e∗V/\ensuremath{\Elzxh}, whose position depends on the charge e∗ of the tunneling particles, either electrons or fractionally charged quasiparticles. These two types of tunneling are related by a strong-weak--coupling duality transformation. We show in a nonperturbative calculation for an exactly solvable point that the singularity at the quasiparticle frequency exists only in the limit of vanishing coupling, whereas the singularity at the electron frequency is present for all coupling strengths. The vanishing coupling limit corresponds to perfectly quantized Hall conductance in the case of quasiparticle tunneling between edge states in the fractional quantum Hall regime, and thus tunneling destroys the singularity at the quasiparticle frequency concomitantly with the quantized current. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
The resonant-level model represents a paradigmatic quantum system which serves as a basis for many other quantum impurity models. We provide a comprehensive analysis of the nonequilibrium transport near a quantum phase transition in a spinless dissipative resonant-level model, extending earlier work [Phys. Rev. Lett 102, 216803 (2009)]. A detailed derivation of a rigorous mapping of our system onto an effective Kondo model is presented. A controlled energy-dependent renormalization-group approach is applied to compute the nonequilibrium current in the presence of a finite bias voltage V. In the linear-response regime $V\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0$, the system exhibits as a function of the dissipative strength a localized-delocalized quantum transition of the Kosterlitz-Thouless (KT) type. We address fundamental issues of the nonequilibrium transport near the quantum phase transition: Does the bias voltage play the same role as temperature to smear out the transition? What is the scaling of the nonequilibrium conductance near the transition? At finite temperatures, we show that the conductance follows the equilibrium scaling for V<T, while it obeys a distinct nonequilibrium profile for V>T. We furthermore provide different signatures of the transition in the finite-frequency current noise and ac conductance via a recently developed functional renormalization group (FRG) approach. The generalization of our analysis to nonequilibrium transport through a resonant level coupled to two chiral Luttinger liquid leads, generated by fractional quantum Hall edge states, is discussed. Our work on the dissipative resonant level has direct relevance to experiments on a quantum dot coupled to a resistive environment, such as H. Mebrahtu et al., [Nature (London) 488, 61 (2012)].