No Arabic abstract
The electrical current through an arbitrary junction connecting quantum wires of spinless interacting fermions is calculated in fermionic representation. The wires are adiabatically attached to two reservoirs at chemical potentials differing by the applied voltage bias. The relevant scale-dependent contributions in perturbation theory in the interaction up to infinite order are evaluated and summed up. The result allows one to construct renormalization group equations for the conductance as a function of voltage (or temperature, wire length). There are two fixed points at which the conductance follows a power law in terms of a scaling variable $Lambda$, which equals the bias voltage $V$, if $V$ is the largest energy scale compared to temperature $T$ and inverse wire length $L^{-1}$, and interpolates between these quantities in the crossover regimes.
We calculate the conductances of a three-way junction of spinless Luttinger-liquid wires as functions of bias voltages applied to three independent Fermi-liquid reservoirs. In particular, we consider the setup that is characteristic of a tunneling experiment, in which the strength of electron-electron interactions in one of the arms of the junction (tunneling tip) is different from that in the other two arms (which together form a main wire). The scaling dependence of the two independent conductances on bias voltages is determined within a fermionic renormalization-group approach in the limit of weak interactions. The solution shows that, in general, the conductances scale with the bias voltages in an essentially different way compared to their scaling with the temperature $T$. Specifically, unlike in the two-terminal setup, the nonlinear conductances cannot be generically obtained from the linear ones by simply replacing $T$ with the corresponding bias voltage or the largest one. Remarkably, a finite tunneling bias voltage prevents the interaction-induced breakup of the main wire into two disconnected pieces in the limit of zero $T$ and a zero source-drain voltage.
We study charge transport through $N$-lead junctions ($Ngeq 3$) of spinless Luttinger liquid wires with bias voltages applied to Fermi-liquid reservoirs. In particular, we consider a Y junction, which is a setup characteristic of the tunneling experiment. In this setup, the strength of electron-electron interactions in one of the arms (tunneling tip) is different from that in the other two arms (which form together the main wire). For a generic single-particle $S$ matrix of the junction, we find that the bias voltage $V$ applied---even symmetrically---to the main wire generates a current proportional to $|V|$ in the tip wire. We identify two mechanisms of this nonequilibrium-induced emergent chirality in a setup characterized by the time-reversal and parity symmetric Hamiltonian of the junction. These are: (i) the emergence of an effective magnetic flux, which breaks time-reversal symmetry, and (ii) the emergence of parity-breaking asymmetry of the setup, both proportional to the interaction strength and the sign of the voltage. The current in the tip wire generated by mechanism (i) is reminiscent of the Hall current in the linear response of a system the Hamiltonian of which breaks time-reversal symmetry; however, in the absence of any magnetic field or a local magnetic moment. Similarly, mechanism (ii) can be thought of as an emergent photogalvanic effect; however, in the presence of inversion symmetry within the main wire. The nonequilibrium chirality implies a rectification of the current in the tip when the main wire is biased by $it ac$ voltage.
We calculate the conductances of a three-terminal junction set-up of spinless Luttinger liquid wires threaded by a magnetic flux, allowing for different interaction strength g_3 != g in the third wire. We employ the fermionic representation in the scattering state picture, allowing for a direct calculation of the linear response conductances, without the need of introducing contact resistances at the connection points to the outer ideal leads. The matrix of conductances is parametrized by three variables. For these we derive coupled renormalization group (RG) equations, by summing up infinite classes of contributions in perturbation theory. The resulting general structure of the RG equations may be employed to describe junctions with an arbitrary number of wires and arbitrary interaction strength in each wire. The fixed point structure of these equations (for the chiral Y-junction) is analyzed in detail. For repulsive interaction (g,g_3>0) there is only one stable fixed point, corresponding to the complete separation of the wires. For attractive interaction (g<0 and/or g_3<0) four fixed points are found, the stability of which depends on the interaction strength. We confirm our previous weak-coupling result of lines of fixed points for special values of the interaction parameters reaching into the strong coupling domain. We find new fixed points not discussed before, even at the symmetric line g=g_3, at variance with the results of Oshikawa et al. The pair tunneling phenomenon conjectured by the latter authors is not found by us.
We calculate the conductance of a system of two spinless Luttinger liquid wires with different interaction strengths g_1, g_2, connected through a short junction, within the scattering state formalism. Following earlier work we formulate the problem in current algebra language, and calculate the scale dependent contribution to the conductance in perturbation theory keeping the leading universal contributions to all orders in the interaction strength. From that we derive a renormalization group (RG) equation for the conductance. The analytical solution of the RG-equation is discussed in dependence on g_1, g_2. The regions of stability of the two fixed points corresponding to conductance G=0 and G=1, respectively, are determined.
Using a Luttinger liquid theory we investigate the time evolution of the particle density of a one-dimensional spinful fermionic system with open boundaries and subject to a finite-duration quench of the inter-particle interaction. Taking into account also the turning on of an umklapp perturbation to the system Hamiltonian as a result of the quench, we study the possible formation of a Wigner molecule inside the system, focusing in particular on the sudden and adiabatic regimes. We show that the creation of this correlated state is essentially due to the propagation of light-cone perturbations through system which arise after both switching on and switching off the quenching protocol and that its behavior strongly depends on the quench duration.