We study the non-equilibrium dynamics and transport of a PT-symmetric Luttinger liquid (LL) after an interaction quench. The system is prepared in domain wall initial state. After a quantum quench to spatially homogeneous, PT-symmetric LL, the domain wall develops into a flat central region that spreads out ballistically faster than the conventional Lieb-Robinson maximal speed. By evaluating the current inside the regular lightcone, we find a universal conductance $e^2/h$, insensitive to the strength of the PT-symmetric interaction. On the other hand, by repeating the very same time evolution with a hermitian LL Hamiltonian, the conductance is heavily renormalized by the hermitian interaction as $e^2/hK$ with $K$ the LL parameter. Our analytical results are tested numerically, confirming the universality of the conductance in the non-hermitian realm.
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 $β$ functions are derived up to second order.
We study the pumping current and the conductance in a Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid in the presence of two time-dependent point like weak impurities, taking into account finite-temperature effects. We investigate the different regimes which can be established as function of the frequency, the temperature and the separation between the impurity potentials. We show how the previous zero temperature or single impurity results are distorted.
We study numerically the universal conductance of Luttinger liquids wire with a single impurity via the Muti-scale Entanglement Renormalization Ansatz (MERA). The scale invariant MERA provides an efficient way to extract scaling operators and scaling dimensions for both the bulk and the boundary conformal field theories. By utilizing the key relationship between the conductance tensor and ground-state correlation function, the universal conductance can be evaluated within the framework of the boundary MERA. We construct the boundary MERA to compute the correlation functions and scaling dimensi…
We provide strong evidence that the relaxation dynamics of one-dimensional, metallic Fermi systems resulting out of an abrupt amplitude change of the two-particle interaction has aspects which are universal in the Luttinger liquid sense: The leading long-time behavior of certain observables is described by universal functions of the equilibrium Luttinger liquid parameter and the renormalized velocity. We analytically derive those functions for the Tomonaga-Luttinger model and verify our hypothesis of universality by considering spinless lattice fermions within the framework of the density matr…
One-dimensional electrons with a linearized dispersion relation are equivalent to a collection of harmonic plasmon modes, which represent long wavelength density oscillations. An immediate consequence of this Luttinger model of one-dimensional electron systems is the absence of inelastic scattering processes responsible for the relaxation of nonequilibrium states. In a generic nonlinear Luttinger liquid plasmons may decay and thus acquire a finite lifetime. We show that equilibration of plasmons is hierarchical and has profound implications for the dynamics after a thermal quench. We also deve…
We study the transport properties of three Luttinger liquid wires (with possibly different interaction strength), connected through a Y-junction, within the scattering state formalism. We first formulate the problem in current algebra language and focus on the case of a symmetric set-up, for which the scattering matrix and the matrix of conductances is parametrized by two variables. For these we derive coupled RG equations, first in a ladder summation up to infinite order in the interaction. The fixed point structure and the implicit solution of these equations is presented. It is shown that h…
The finite-bandwidth conductance of a Luttinger liquid (LL) with a cluster of impurities is studied and its variation with respect to temperature is shown. The calculations are done using the correlation functions obtained using the powerful non-chiral bosonization technique (NCBT) . The results are compared with those obtained by Matveev, Yue and Glazman [K. Matveev et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 71, 3351 (1993)] who deal with a weakly interacting LL. By contrast, NCBT correctly provides the conductance for all values of the interaction strength (as well as the sign). In addition to finding perfect…
We study the relaxation dynamics of a nonequilibrium Luttinger liquid after a sudden interaction switch-on ("quench"), focussing on a double-step initial momentum distribution function. In the framework of the non-equilibrium bosonization, the results are obtained in terms of singular Fredholm determinants that are evaluated numerically and whose asymptotics are found analytically. While the quasi-particle weights decay exponentially with time after the quench, this is not a relaxation into a thermal state, in view of the integrability of the model. The steady-state distribution emerging at in…
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 depende…
We study the relaxation dynamics of the one-dimensional Tomonaga-Luttinger model after an interaction quench paying particular attention to the momentum dependence of the two-particle interaction. Several potentials of different analytical form are investigated all leading to universal Luttinger liquid physics in equilibrium. The steady-state fermionic momentum distribution shows universal behavior in the sense of the Luttinger liquid phenomenology. For generic regular potentials the large time decay of the momentum distribution function towards the steady-state value is characterized by a pow…
The theoretical model of the short-range interacting Luttinger liquid predicts a power-law scaling of the density of states and the momentum distribution function around the Fermi surface, which can be readily tested through tunneling experiments. However, some physical systems have long-range interaction, most notably the Coulomb interaction, leading to significantly different behaviors from the short-range interacting system. In this paper, we revisit the tunneling theory for the one-dimensional electrons interacting via the long-range Coulomb force. We show that even though in a small dynam…
In this work, the correlation functions of a Luttinger liquid with a cluster of impurities around an origin obtained using the Non chiral bosonization technique (NCBT) are used to study two important physical phenomena, viz., conductance and resonant tunneling. The latter is studied when the cluster consists of two impurities separated by a distance (measured in units of the Fermi wavelength). Conductance is studied both in the Kubo formalism, which relates it to current-current correlations (four-point functions), as well as the outcome of a tunneling phenomena (two-point functions). In both …
We study four-lead junction of semi-infinite wires by using fermionic representation in the scattering state formalism. The model of spinless fermions with short-range Luttinger liquid type interaction is used. We find the renormalization group (RG) equations for the conductances of the system in the first order of fermionic interaction. In contrast to the well-known cases of two-lead and three-lead junctions, we show that the RG equations cannot be expressed solely in terms of conductances. The appearing ambiguity is resolved by choosing a certain sign defined at the level of S-matrix, but hi…
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 s…
We investigate the Loschmidt echo, the overlap of the initial and final wavefunctions of Luttinger liquids after a spatially inhomogeneous interaction quench. In studying the Luttinger model, we obtain an analytic solution of the bosonic Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations after quenching the interactions within a finite spatial region. As opposed to the power law temporal decay following a potential quench, the interaction quench in the Luttinger model leads to a finite, hardly time dependent overlap, therefore no orthogonality catastrophe occurs. The steady state value of the Loschmidt echo after…
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 li…
Using derived previously effective theory we explore conductance in the Luttinger model with one impurity. A new approach to the renormalization group (RG) analysis of this model is developed. It is based on the original Gell-Mann-Low formulation of RG. We sum up infrared logarithmic contibutions to conductance in the leading and few subsequent approximations. We analyze the validity of widely used ``poor man's'' scaling approach and find that it is applicable only in the leading approximation. Our results for corrections to this approximation are different from results obtained in other paper…
We consider finite-time quantum quenches in the interacting Tomonaga--Luttinger model, for example time-dependent changes of the nearest-neighbour interactions for spinless fermions. We use the exact solutions for specific protocols including the linear and cosine ramps (or, more generally, periodic pumping). We study the dynamics of the total and kinetic energy as well as the Green functions during as well as after the quench. For the latter we find that the light-cone picture remains applicable, however, the propagating front is delayed as compared to the sudden quench. We extract the univer…
We develop two novel numerical schemes to study the conductance of the two-wire junction of inequivalent Tomonaga-Luttinger Liquids. In the first scheme we use the static current-current correlation function across the junction to extract the linear conductance through a relation that is derived via the bosonization method. In the second scheme we apply a bias and evaluate the time-dependent current across the junction to obtain the current-voltage characteristic. The conductance is then extracted from the small bias result within the linear response regime. Both schemes are based on the infin…
We study the dynamics resulting out of an abrupt change of the two-particle interaction in two models of closed one-dimensional Fermi systems: (a) the field theoretical Tomonaga-Luttinger model and (b) a microscopic lattice model. Using a nonperturbative approach which is controlled for small two-particle interactions we are able to reach large times allowing us to access the properties of the steady state of the lattice model. Comparing those to the exact solution of the full dynamics in the Tomonaga-Luttinger model we provide evidence for universal Luttinger liquid behavior.
We study variable-rate linear quenches in the anisotropic Heisenberg (XXZ) chain, starting at the XX point. This is equivalent to switching on a nearest neighbour interaction for hard-core bosons or an interaction quench for free fermions. The physical observables we investigate are: the energy pumped into the system during the quench, the spin-flip correlation function, and the bipartite fluctuations of the z component of the spin in a box. We find excellent agreement between exact numerics (infinite system time-evolving block decimation, iTEBD) and analytical results from bosonization, as a …
We study the escort probability distribution function of work done during an interaction quantum quench of Luttinger liquids. It crosses over from the thermodynamic to the small system limit with increasing $a$, the order of the escort distribution, and depends on the universal combination $(|K_i-K_f|/(K_i+K_F))^a$ with $K_i$, $K_f$ the initial and final Luttinger liquid parameters, respectively. From its characteristic function, the diagonal Rényi entropies and the many body inverse participation ratio (IPR) are determined to evaluate the information content of the time evolved wavefunction i…
Motivated by recent experiments on interacting cold atoms, we analyze interaction quenches in Luttinger liquids (LL), where the interaction is ramped from zero to a finite value within a finite time. The fermionic single particle density matrix reveals several regions of spatial and temporal coordinates relative to the quench time, termed as Fermi liquid, sudden quench LL, adiabatic LL regimes, and a LL regime with time dependent exponent. The various regimes can also be observed in the momentum distribution of the fermions, directly accessible through time of flight experiments. Most of our r…
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 …
Within the framework of boundary conformal field theory, we evaluate the conductance of stable fixed points of junctions of two and three quantum wires with different Luttinger parameters. For two wires, the physical properties are governed by a single effective Luttinger parameters for each of the charge and spin sectors. We present numerical density-matrix-renormalization-group calculations of the conductance of a junction of two chains of interacting spinless fermions with different interaction strengths, obtained using a recently developed method [Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 226803 (2010)]. The …
Luttinger liquids (LLs) arise by coupling left- and right-moving particles through interactions in one dimension. This most natural partitioning of LLs is investigated by the momentum-space entanglement after a quantum quench using analytical and numerical methods. We show that the momentum-space entanglement spectrum of a LL possesses many universal features both in equilibrium and after a quantum quench. The largest entanglement eigenvalue is identical to the Loschmidt echo, i.e. the overlap of the disentangled and final wavefunctions of the system. The second largest eigenvalue is the overl…
We study the electrical conductance in single-mode quantum wires with Rashba spin-orbit interaction subjected to externally applied magnetic fields in the regime in which the ratio of spin-orbit momentum to the Fermi momentum is close to an odd integer, so that a combined effect of multi-electron interaction and applied magnetic field leads to a partial gap in the spectrum. We study how this partial gap manifests itself in the temperature dependence of the fractional conductance of the quantum wire. We use two complementing techniques based on bosonization: refermionization of the model at a p…
In one-dimensional conductors, interactions result in correlated electronic systems. At low energy, a hallmark signature of the so-called Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids (TLL) is the universal conductance curve predicted in presence of an impurity. A seemingly different topic is the quantum laws of electricity, when distinct quantum conductors are assembled in a circuit. In particular, the conductances are suppressed at low energy, a phenomenon called dynamical Coulomb blockade (DCB). Here we investigate the conductance of mesoscopic circuits constituted by a short single-channel quantum conductor …
The combined effect of Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit interactions on the physics of a helical Luttinger liquid coupled to a Kondo impurity is studied. A Rashba coupling can potentially destroy the Kondo singlet formation in certain parameter regimes [Phys. Rev. B 86, 161103(R) (2012)]. This effect is here shown to vanish for sufficiently strong Dresselhaus interaction. The transport properties of the system are investigated by calculating electrical conductance, current and current fluctuations, and thermal conductance.
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…
We investigate the time evolution towards the asymptotic steady state of a one dimensional interacting system after a quantum quench. We show that at finite time the latter induces entanglement between right- and left- moving density excitations, encoded in their cross-correlators, which vanishes in the long-time limit. This behavior results in a universal time-decay in system spectral properties $ \propto t^{-2} $, in addition to non-universal power-law contributions typical of Luttinger liquids. Importantly, we argue that the presence of quench-induced entanglement clearly emerges in transpo…
Reaching a target quantum state from an initial state within a finite temporal window is a challenging problem due to non-adiabaticity. We study the optimal protocol for swithcing on interactions to reach the ground state of a weakly interacting Luttinger liquid within a finite time $τ$, starting from the non-interacting ground state. The protocol is optimized by minimizing the excess energy at the end of the quench, or by maximizing the overlap with the interacting ground state. We find that the optimal protocol is symmetric with respect to $τ/2$, and can be expressed as a functional of the o…
We study the non-equilibrium dynamics of the Luttinger model after a quantum quench, when the initial state is a finite temperature thermal equilibrium state. The diagonal elements of the density matrix in the steady state show thermal features for high temperature initial states only, otherwise retain highly non-thermal character. The time evolution of Uhlmann fidelity, which measures the distance between the time evolved and initial states, is evaluated for arbitrary initial temperatures and quench protocols. In the long time limit, the overlap between the time evolved and initial system dec…
We analyze the probability distribution function (PDF) of work done on a Luttinger liquid for an arbitrary finite duration interaction quench and show that it can be described in terms a generalized Gibbs ensemble. We construct the corresponding density matrix with explicit intermode correlations, and determine the duration and interaction dependence of the probability of an adiabatic transition and the PDF of non-adiabatic processes. In the thermodynamic limit, the PDF of work exhibits a non-Gaussian maximum around the excess heat, carrying almost all spectral weight. In contrast, in the smal…
We calculate the linear response conductance of electrons in a Luttinger liquid with arbitrary interaction g_2, and subject to a potential barrier of arbitrary strength, as a function of temperature. We map the Hamiltonian in the basis of scattering states into an effective low energy Hamiltonian in current algebra form. First the renormalization group (RG) equation for weak interaction is derived in the current operator language both using the operator product expansion and the equation of motion method. To access the strong coupling regime, two methods of deducing the RG equation from pertur…
A Luttinger liquid (LL) describes low energy excitations of many interacting one dimensional systems, and exhibits universal response both in and out of equilibrium. We analyze its behaviour in the non-hermitian realm after quantum quenching to a PT-symmetric LL by focusing on the fermionic single particle density matrix. For short times, we demonstrate the emergence of unique phenomena, characteristic to non-hermitian systems, that correlations propagate faster than the conventional maximal speed, known as the Lieb-Robinson bound. These emergent supersonic modes travel with velocities that ar…
We study the non-equilibrium dynamics of a Luttinger liquid after a simultaneous quantum quench of the interaction and dissipative quench to the environment within the realm of the Lindblad equation. When the couplings to environment satisfy detailed balance, the system is destined to thermalize, which we follow using bosonization. The thermodynamic entropy of the system, which also encodes information about the entanglement with the environment, either exhibits a maximum and minimum or grows monotonically before reaching its thermal value in a universal fashion. The single-particle density ma…
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" perturbatio…
The study of the non-equilibrium dynamics of many-body systems after a quantum quench received a considerable boost and a deep theoretical understanding from the path integral formulation in imaginary time. However, the celebrated problem of a quench in the Luttinger parameter of a one dimensional quantum critical system (massless quench) has so far only been solved in the real-time Heisenberg picture. In order to bridge this theoretical gap and to understand on the same ground massive and massless quenches, we study the problem of a gaussian field characterized by a coupling parameter K withi…
The density operator in the Luttinger model consists of two components, one of which describes long-wave fluctuations and the other is related to the rapid oscillations of the charge-density-wave (CDW) type, caused by short-range electron correlations. It is commonly believed that the conductance is determined by the long-wave component. The CDW component is considered only when an impurity is present. We investigate the contribution of this component to the dynamic density response of a Luttinger liquid free from impurities. We show that the conventional form of the CDW density operator does …
We theoretically investigate the non-equilibrium current through a quantum dot coupled to one- dimensional electron leads, utilizing a controlled frequency-dependent renormalization group (RG) approach. We compute the non-equilibrium conductance for large bias voltages and address the interplay between decoherence, Kondo entanglement and Luttinger physics. The combined effect of large bias voltage and strong interactions in the leads, known to stabilize two-channel Kondo physics, leads to non-trivial modifications of the conductance. For weak interactions, we build an analogy to a dot coupled …
In a previous paper [J.-M. Bischoff and E. Jeckelmann, Phys. Rev. B 96, 195111 (2017)] we introduced a density-matrix renormalization group method for calculating the linear conductance of one-dimensional correlated quantum systems and demonstrated it on homogeneous spinless fermion chains with impurities. Here we present extensions of this method to inhomogeneous systems, models with phonons, and the spin conductance of electronic models. The method is applied to a spinless fermion wire-lead model, the homogeneous spinless Holstein model, and the Hubbard model. Its capabilities are demonstrat…
Electron transport through a single-level quantum dot weakly coupled to Luttinger liquid leads is considered in the master equation approach. It is shown that for a weak or moderately strong interaction the differential conductance demonstrates resonant-like behavior as a function of bias and gate voltages. The inelastic channels associated with vibron-assisted electron tunnelling can even dominate electron transport for a certain region of interaction strength. In the limit of strong interaction resonant behavior disappears and the differential conductance scales as a power low on temperature…
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 …
We study the influence of electron-phonon coupling on electron transport through a Luttinger liquid with an embedded weak scatterer or weak link. We derive the renormalization group (RG) equations which indicate that the directions of RG flows can change upon varying either the relative strength of the electron-electron and electron-phonon coupling or the ratio of Fermi to sound velocities. This results in the rich phase diagram with up to three fixed points: an unstable one with a finite value of conductance and two stable ones, corresponding to an ideal metal or insulator.
We study the non-equilibrium dynamics of the Luttinger model after suddenly turning on and off the bare Coulomb interaction between the fermions. We analyze several correlation functions such as the one particle density matrix and vertex correlations, its finite time dynamics and the stationary state limit. Correlations exhibit a non-linear light cone effect: the spreading of the initial signal accelerates as a consequence of the quantum nature of the excitations, whose peculiar dispersion of plasmonic type in 1D gives rise to a logarithmic divergence in the group velocity at $q=0$. In additio…
