No Arabic abstract
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.
Using a Luttinger liquid theory we investigate the time evolution of the particle density of a one-dimensional fermionic system with open boundaries and subject to a finite duration quench of the inter-particle interaction. We provide analytical and asymptotic solutions to the unitary time evolution of the system, showing that both switching on and switching off the quench ramp create light-cone perturbations in the density. The post-quench dynamics is strongly affected by the interference between these two perturbations. In particular, we find that the discrepancy between the time-dependent density and the one obtained by a generalized Gibbs ensemble picture vanishes with an oscillatory behavior as a function of the quench duration, with local minima corresponding to a perfect overlap of the two light-cone perturbations. For adiabatic quenches, we also obtain a similar behavior in the approach of the generalized Gibbs ensemble density towards the one associated with the ground state of the final Hamiltonian.
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.
The transport dynamics of a quenched Luttinger liquid tunnel-coupled to a fermionic reservoir is investigated. In the transient dynamics, we show that for a sudden quench of the electron interaction universal power-law decay in time of the tunneling current occurs, ascribed to the presence of entangled compound excitations created by the quench. In sharp contrast to the usual non universal power-law behavior of a zero-temperature non-quenched Luttinger liquid, the steady state tunneling current is ohmic and can be explained in terms of an effective quench-activated heating of the system. Our study unveils an unconventional dynamics for a quenched Luttinger liquid that could be identified in quenched cold Fermi gases.
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 develop the renormalization group theory of the conductances of N-lead junctions of spinless Luttinger-liquid wires as functions of bias voltages applied to N independent Fermi-liquid reservoirs. Based on the perturbative results up to second order in the interaction we demonstrate that the conductances obey scaling. The corresponding renormalization group $beta$ functions are derived up to second order.