Full counting statistics of chiral Luttinger liquids with impurities

We study the statistics of charge transfer through an impurity in a chiral Luttinger liquid (realized experimentally as a quantum point contact in a fractional quantum Hall edge state device). Taking advantage of the integrability we present a procedure for obtaining the cumulant generating function of the probability distribution to transfer a fixed amount of charge through the constriction. Using this approach we analyze in detail the behavior of the third cumulant C3 as a function of applied voltage, temperature, and barrier height. We predict that C3 can be used to measure the fractional charge at temperatures, which are several orders of magnitude higher than those needed to extract the fractional charge from the measurement of the second cumulant. Moreover, we identify the component of C3, which carries the information about the fractional charge.     

Rectification in Luttinger liquids

We investigate the rectification of an ac bias in Luttinger liquids in the presence of an asymmetric potential (the ratchet effect). We show that a strong repulsive electron interaction enhances the ratchet current in comparison with Fermi-liquid systems, and the dc I-V curve is strongly asymmetric in the low-voltage regime even for a weak asymmetric potential. At higher voltages the ratchet current exhibits an oscillatory voltage dependence.     

Screening of impurities in strong magnetic fields

Charged impurities inserted in an electron gas in strong magnetic fields and at low temperatures are considered. Using the random phase and the generalized Born approximations, a self-consistent calculation of the screening of the impurities and the broadening of the electronic energy levels due to the scattering by these impurities is presented. Concrete results obtained in numerical form show that for typical semiconductors the anisotropy of te screening induced by the magnetic field is strongly reduced by collisional damping. The screening length, however, depends rather strongly on the field.On leave of absence from the Department of Physics, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.     

Damping of zero sound in Luttinger liquids

We calculate the damping γ_q of collective density oscillations (zero sound) in a one-dimensional Fermi gas with dimensionless forward scattering interaction F and quadratic energy dispersion k² / 2 m at zero temperature. Using standard many-body perturbation theory, we obtain γ_q from the expansion of the inverse irreducible polarization to first order in the effective screened (RPA) interaction. For wave-vectors | q| /k_F ≪F (where k_F = m v_F is the Fermi wave-vector) we find to leading order γ_q ∝| q |³ /(v_F m²). On the other hand, for F ≪| q| /k_F most of the spectral weight is carried by the particle-hole continuum, which is distributed over a frequency interval of the order of q²/m. We also show that zero sound damping leads to a finite maximum proportional to |k - k_F | ^{-2 + 2 η} of the charge peak in the single-particle spectral function, where η is the anomalous dimension. Our prediction agrees with photoemission data for the blue bronze K_0.3MoO₃. We comment on other recent calculations of γ_q.     

Sea-boson theory of Landau-Fermi liquids,Luttinger liquids and Wigner crystals

It is shown how Luttinger liquids may be studied using sea-bosons. The main advantage of the sea-boson method is its ability to provide information about short-wavelength physics in addition to the asymptotics and is naturally generalizable to more than one dimension. In this article, we solve the Luttinger model and the Calogero-Sutherland model, the latter in the weak-coupling limit. The anomalous exponent we obtain in the former case is identical to the one obtained by Mattis and Lieb. We also apply this method to solve the two-dimensional analog of the Luttinger model and show that the system is a Landau-Fermi liquid. Then we solve the model of spinless fermions in one dimension with long-range (gauge) interactions and map the Wigner crystal phase of the system.     

Zeeman splitting of zero-bias anomaly in Luttinger liquids

Tunneling density of states (DOS) in Luttinger liquid has a dip at zero energy, commonly known as the zero-bias anomaly. In the presence of a magnetic field, in addition to the zero-bias anomaly, the DOS develops two peaks separated from the origin by the Zeeman energy. We show that these finite-bias anomalies are characterized by a power-law behavior of the DOS and the differential conductance, and find the corresponding exponents at arbitrary strength of the electron-electron interaction. The developed theory is applicable to various kinds of quantum wires, including carbon nanotubes.     

Junction of Tomonaga–Luttinger liquids

Low-energy physics of one-dimensional electron systems can be generally described in terms of the Tomonaga–Luttinger liquid, instead of the Fermi liquid. We give a nontechnical review for nonspecialists on this intriguing subject. As an example of physical consequences, we discuss junction of two and three Tomonaga–Luttinger liquids.     

Coulomb drag shot noise in coupled Luttinger liquids

Coulomb drag shot noise has been studied theoretically for 1D interacting electron systems, which are realized, e.g., in single-wall nanotubes. We show that under adiabatic coupling to external leads, the Coulomb drag shot noise of two coupled or crossed nanotubes contains surprising effects, in particular, a complete locking of the shot noise in the tubes. In contrast to Coulomb drag of the average current, the noise locking is based on a symmetry of the underlying Hamiltonian and is not limited to asymptotically small energy scales.     

Two-dimensional anisotropic non-Fermi-liquid phase of coupled Luttinger liquids

Using bosonization techniques, we show that strong forward scattering interactions between one-dimensional spinless Luttinger liquids (LL) can stabilize a phase where charge-density wave, superconducting, and transverse single particle hopping perturbations are irrelevant. This new phase retains its LL-like properties in the directions of the chains, but with relations between exponents modified by the transverse interactions, whereas it is a perfect insulator in the transverse direction. The mechanism that stabilizes this phase is strong transverse charge-density wave fluctuations at incommensurate wave vector, which frustrates crystal formation by preventing lock-in of the in-chain density waves.     

Energy partitioning of tunneling currents into Luttinger liquids

Tunneling of electrons of definite chirality into a quantum wire creates counterpropagating excitations, carrying both charge and energy. We find that the partitioning of energy is qualitatively different from that of charge. The partition ratio of energy depends on the excess energy of the tunneling electrons (controlled by the applied bias) and on the interaction strength within the wire (characterized by the Luttinger-liquid parameter κ), while the partitioning of charge is fully determined by κ. Moreover, unlike for charge currents, the partitioning of energy current should manifest itself in dc experiments on wires contacted by conventional (Fermi-liquid) leads.     

Particle-hole symmetric Luttinger liquids in a quantum Hall circuit

We report current transmission data through a split-gate constriction fabricated onto a two-dimensional electron system in the integer quantum Hall (QH) regime. Split-gate biasing drives interedge backscattering and is shown to lead to suppressed or enhanced transmission, in marked contrast to the expected linear Fermi-liquid behavior. This evolution is described in terms of particle-hole symmetry and allows us to conclude that an unexpected class of gate-controlled particle-hole-symmetric chiral Luttinger liquids (CLLs) can exist at the edges of our QH circuit. These results highlight the role of particle-hole symmetry on the properties of CLL edge states.     

Luttinger liquids with boundaries: Power-laws and energy scales

We present a study of the one-particle spectral properties for a variety of models of Luttinger liquids with open boundaries. We first consider the Tomonaga-Luttinger model using bosonization. For weak interactions the boundary exponent of the power-law suppression of the spectral weight close to the chemical potential is dominated by a term linear in the interaction. This motivates us to study the spectral properties also within the Hartree-Fock approximation. It already gives power-law behavior and qualitative agreement with the exact spectral function. For the lattice model of spinless fermions and the Hubbard model we present numerically exact results obtained using the density-matrix renormalization-group algorithm. We show that many aspects of the behavior of the spectral function close to the boundary can again be understood within the Hartree-Fock approximation. For the repulsive Hubbard model with interaction U the spectral weight is enhanced in a large energy range around the chemical potential. At smaller energies a power-law suppression, as predicted by bosonization, sets in. We present an analytical discussion of the crossover and show that for small U it occurs at energies exponentially (in -1/U) close to the chemical potential, i.e. that bosonization only holds on exponentially small energy scales. We show that such a crossover can also be found in other models. Received 8 February 2000 and Received in final form 25 April 2000