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arXiv:cond-mat/9903121 · Physical review. B, Condensed matter

Boundary effects on one-particle spectra of Luttinger liquids

Kurt Schönhammer, V. Meden, Walter Metzner, Ulrich Schollwöck, O. Gunnarsson

Published Feb 15, 2000• 15 citations
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Abstract

We calculate one-particle spectra for a variety of models of Luttinger liquids with open boundary conditions. For the repulsive Hubbard model, the spectral weight close to the boundary is enhanced in a large energy range around the chemical potential. A power-law suppression, previously predicted by bosonization, only occurs after a crossover at energies very close to the chemical potential. Our comparison with exact spectra shows that the effects of boundaries can partly be understood within the Hartree-Fock approximation.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.61.4393

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We calculate one-particle spectra for a variety of models of Luttinger liquids with open boundary conditions. For the repulsive Hubbard model, the spectral weight close to the boundary is enhanced in a large energy range around the chemical potential. A power-law suppression, previously predicted by bosonization, only occurs after a crossover at energies very close to the chemical potential. Our comparison with exact spectra shows that the effects of boundaries can partly be understood within the Hartree-Fock approximation.
The physics of one-dimensional systems of interacting fermions strongly differs from the picture offered by Fermi liquid theory. The low-energy properties of metallic, paramagnetic 1D Fermi systems are well described by the Luttinger liquid (LL) theory. Among other properties, the homogeneous LL is known to exhibit power-law behaviour for various correlation functions. For spin rotational invariant models, the exponents can be expressed in terms of a single parameter Kρ, which is known to be non-universal. The LL concept emerged in the study of homogeneous systems with periodic boundary condition (PBC). In these models the local spectral function shows a power-law suppression at energies asymptotically close to the chemical potential µ. Theoretically, this is very well understood and the exact LL parameter Kρ is known for a set of integrable models. In the last decades however, the interest shifted towards the investigation of LLs with PBC including impurities. The fact that these systems have been shown to scale to chains with open ends led to the study of several models where open boundary condition (OBC) are introduced. As the translational invariance is broken, the exponent of the power-law suppression close to the boundary differs from the one in the bulk. The present work is devoted to the study of the local spectral function of two lattice models of LLs with open boundaries, namely the spinless fermions model with nearest neighbour interaction and the 1D Hubbard model, with the methods of perturbation theory. It is demonstrated that many aspects of the spectral properties can be understood within the HF theory. Despite what one usually reads about one-dimensional interacting Fermi systems, in the presence of the boundary perturbation theory is already capable of providing meaningful results. Concurrently, this method also allows us to develop an understanding of the dip appearing in the local spectral function at an energy different from the chemical potential.
The single electron Green's function of the one-dimensional Tomonaga-Luttinger model in the presence of open boundaries is calculated with bosonization methods. We show that the critical exponents of the local spectral density and of the momentum distribution change in the presence of a boundary. The well understood universal bulk behavior always crosses over to a boundary dominated regime for small energies or small momenta. We show this crossover explicitly for the large-U Hubbard model in the low-temperature limit. Consequences for photoemission experiments are discussed.
Motivated by recent scanning tunneling and photoemission spectroscopy measurements on self-organized gold chains on a germanium surface, we reinvestigate the local single-particle spectral properties of Luttinger liquids. In the first part we use the bosonization approach to exactly compute the local spectral function of a simplified field theoretical low-energy model and take a closer look at scaling properties as a function of the ratio of energy and temperature. Translational-invariant Luttinger liquids as well as those with an open boundary (cut chain geometry) are considered. We explicitly show that the scaling functions of both set-ups have the same analytical form. The scaling behavior suggests a variety of consistency checks which can be performed on measured data to experimentally verify Luttinger liquid behavior. In the second part we approximately compute the local spectral function of a microscopic lattice model-the extended Hubbard model-close to an open boundary using the functional renormalization group. We show that it follows the field theoretical prediction in the low-energy regime as a function of energy and temperature, and point out the importance of nonuniversal energy scales inherent to any microscopic model. The spatial dependence of this spectral function is characterized by oscillatory behavior and an envelope function which follows a power law in accordance with the field theoretical continuum model. Interestingly, for the lattice model we find a phase shift which is proportional to the two-particle interaction and not accounted for in the standard bosonization approach to Luttinger liquids with an open boundary. We briefly comment on the effects of several one-dimensional branches cutting the Fermi energy and Rashba spin-orbit interaction.
We use bosonization methods to calculate the exact finite-temperature single-electron Green's function of a spinful Luttinger liquid confined by open boundaries. The corresponding local spectral density is constructed and analyzed in detail. The interplay between boundary, finite-size, and thermal effects are shown to dramatically influence the low-energy properties of the system. In particular, the well-known zero-temperature critical behavior in the bulk always crosses over to a boundary dominated regime in the vicinity of the Fermi level. Thermal fluctuations cause an enhanced depletion of spectral weight for small energies $\ensuremath{\omega}$, with the spectral density scaling as ${\ensuremath{\omega}}^{2}$ for $\ensuremath{\omega}$ much less than the temperature. Consequences for photoemission experiments are discussed.
The nonlinear Luttinger liquid phenomenology of one-dimensional correlated Fermi systems is an attempt to describe the effect of the band curvature beyond the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid paradigm. It relies on the observation that the dynamical structure factor of the interacting electron gas shows a logarithmic threshold singularity when evaluated to first order perturbation theory in the two-particle interaction. This term was interpreted as the linear one in an expansion which was conjectured to resum to a power law. A field theory, the mobile impurity model, which is constructed such that it provides the power law in the structure factor, was suggested to be the proper effective model and used to compute the single-particle spectral function. This forms the basis of the nonlinear Luttinger liquid phenomenology. Surprisingly, the second order perturbative contribution to the structure factor was so far not studied. We first close this gap and show that it is consistent with the conjectured power law. Secondly, we critically assess the steps leading to the mobile impurity Hamiltonian. We show that the model does not allow to include the effect of the momentum dependence of the (bulk) two-particle potential. This dependence was recently shown to spoil power laws in the single-particle spectral function which previously were believed to be part of the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid universality. Although our second order results for the structure factor are consistent with power-law scaling, this raises doubts that the conjectured nonlinear Luttinger liquid phenomenology can be considered as universal. We conclude that more work is required to clarify this.
The nonlinear Luttinger liquid phenomenology of one-dimensional correlated Fermi systems is an attempt to describe the effect of the band curvature beyond the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid paradigm. It relies on the observation that the dynamical structure factor of the interacting electron gas shows a logarithmic threshold singularity when evaluated to first order perturbation theory in the two-particle interaction. This term was interpreted as the linear one in an expansion which was conjectured to resum to a power law. A field theory, the mobile impurity model, which is constructed such that it provides the power law in the structure factor, was suggested to be the proper effective model and used to compute the single-particle spectral function. This forms the basis of the nonlinear Luttinger liquid phenomenology. Surprisingly, the second order perturbative contribution to the structure factor was so far not studied. We first close this gap and show that it is consistent with the conjectured power law. Secondly, we critically assess the steps leading to the mobile impurity Hamiltonian. We show that the model does not allow to include the effect of the momentum dependence of the (bulk) two-particle potential. This dependence was recently shown to spoil power laws in the single-particle spectral function which previously were believed to be part of the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid universality. Although our second order results for the structure factor are consistent with power-law scaling, this raises doubts that the conjectured nonlinear Luttinger liquid phenomenology can be considered as universal. We conclude that more work is required to clarify this.