Dynamical aspects of fluctuations in linear conductors

A model is presented which describes the effect of a finite correlation length of the Peierls distortion on optical properties, width and position of the Raman line from the amplitude mode, and Knight shift in linear conductors. A canonical transformation to amplitude and phase variables is used which generalizes the linear transformation of Lee, Rice and Anderson. The non-linear effects are shown to be essential for the interpretation of experimental data in KCP.