No Arabic abstract
We compare two fermionic renormalization group methods which have been used to investigate the electronic transport properties of one-dimensional metals with two-particle interaction (Luttinger liquids) and local inhomogeneities. The first one is a poor mans method setup to resum ``leading-log divergences of the effective transmission at the Fermi momentum. Generically the resulting equations can be solved analytically. The second approach is based on the functional renormalization group method and leads to a set of differential equations which can only for certain setups and in limiting cases be solved analytically, while in general it must be integrated numerically. Both methods are claimed to be applicable for inhomogeneities of arbitrary strength and to capture effects of the two-particle interaction, such as interaction dependent exponents, up to leading order. We critically review this for the simplest case of a single impurity. While on first glance the poor mans approach seems to describe the crossover from the ``perfect to the ``open chain fixed point we collect evidence that difficulties may arise close to the ``perfect chain fixed point. Due to a subtle relation between the scaling dimensions of the two fixed points this becomes apparent only in a detailed analysis. In the functional renormalization group method the coupling of the different scattering channels is kept which leads to a better description of the underlying physics.
We use Wilsons weak coupling ``momentum shell renormalization group method to show that two-particle interaction terms commonly neglected in bosonization of one-dimensional correlated electron systems with open boundaries are indeed irrelevant in the renormalization group sense. Our study provides a more solid ground for many investigations of Luttinger liquids with open boundaries.
We study the interplay of interactions and disorder in a one-dimensional fermion lattice coupled adiabatically to infinite reservoirs. We employ both the functional renormalization group (FRG) as well as matrix product state techniques, which serve as an accurate benchmark for small systems. Using the FRG, we compute the length- and temperature-dependence of the conductance averaged over $10^4$ samples for lattices as large as $10^{5}$ sites. We identify regimes in which non-ohmic power law behavior can be observed and demonstrate that the corresponding exponents can be understood by adapting earlier predictions obtained perturbatively for disordered Luttinger liquids. In presence of both disorder and isolated impurities, the conductance has a universal single-parameter scaling form. This lays the groundwork for an application of the functional renormalization group to the realm of many-body localization.
We present a comprehensive analysis of quantum fluctuation effects in the superfluid ground state of an attractively interacting Fermi system, employing the attractive Hubbard model as a prototype. The superfluid order parameter, and fluctuations thereof, are implemented by a bosonic Hubbard-Stratonovich field, which splits into two components corresponding to longitudinal and transverse (Goldstone) fluctuations. Physical properties of the system are computed from a set of approximate flow equations obtained by truncating the exact functional renormalization group flow of the coupled fermion-boson action. The equations capture the influence of fluctuations on non-universal quantities such as the fermionic gap, as well as the universal infrared asymptotics present in every fermionic superfluid. We solve the flow equations numerically in two dimensions and compute the asymptotic behavior analytically in two and three dimensions. The fermionic gap Delta is reduced significantly compared to the mean-field gap, and the bosonic order parameter alpha, which is equivalent to Delta in mean-field theory, is suppressed to values below Delta by fluctuations. The fermion-boson vertex is only slightly renormalized. In the infrared regime, transverse order parameter fluctuations associated with the Goldstone mode lead to a strong renormalization of longitudinal fluctuations: the longitudinal mass and the bosonic self-interaction vanish linearly as a function of the scale in two dimensions, and logarithmically in three dimensions, in agreement with the exact behavior of an interacting Bose gas.
We demonstrate that the plasmon in one-dimensional Coulomb interacting electron fluids can develop a finite-momentum maxon-roton-like nonmonotonic energy-momentum dispersion. Such an unusual nonmonotonicity arises from the strongly interacting $1/r$ Coulomb potential going beyond the conventional band linearization approximation used in the standard bosonization theories of Luttinger liquids. We provide details for the nonmonotonic plasmon dispersion using both bosonization and RPA theories. We also calculate the specific heat including the nonmonotonicity and discuss possibilities for observing the nonmonotonic plasmon dispersion in various physical systems including semiconductor quantum wires, carbon nanotubes, and the twisted bilayer graphene at sub-degree twist angles, which naturally realize one-dimensional domain-wall states.
We develop a general framework to compute the scaling of entanglement entropy in inhomogeneous one-dimensional quantum systems belonging to the Luttinger liquid universality class. While much insight has been gained in homogeneous systems by making use of conformal field theory techniques, our focus is on systems for which the Luttinger parameter $K$ depends on position, and conformal invariance is broken. An important point of our analysis is that contributions stemming from the UV cutoff have to be treated very carefully, since they now depend on position. We show that such terms can be removed either by considering regularized entropies specifically designed to do so, or by tabulating numerically the cutoff, and reconstructing its contribution to the entropy through the local density approximation. We check our method numerically in the spin-1/2 XXZ spin chain in a spatially varying magnetic field, and find excellent agreement.