Superdiffusive transport of energy in generic Luttinger liquids

ORAL

Abstract

Metals in one spatial dimension are described at the lowest energy scales by the Luttinger liquid theory. It is well understood that this free theory, and even interacting integrable models, can support ballistic transport of conserved quantities including energy. Realistic Luttinger liquids, even in pure systems without disorder, contain integrability-breaking interactions, which are expected to lead to thermalization and conventional diffusive linear response. We show that the expansion of energy when such a non-integrable Luttinger liquid is locally heated above its ground state shows superdiffusive behavior (i.e., spreading of energy that is intermediate between diffusion and ballistic propagation), by combining an analytical anomalous diffusion model with numerical matrix product state calculations. The main ingredient in the analytical model is the power-law in linear-response transport that originates in the scaling dimension of integrability-breaking corrections to the Luttinger liquid. Some other one-dimensional systems that also remain far from the linear-response regime for long times are discussed.

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Presenters

  • Joel Moore

    University of California, Berkeley, Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA, University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Physics, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Authors

  • Joel Moore

    University of California, Berkeley, Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA, University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Physics, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Vir Bulchandani

    University of California, Berkeley

  • Christoph Karrasch

    Freie Universitaet Berlin, Physics, Freie Universität Berlin, Dahlem Center for Complex Quantum Systems and Fachbereich Physik, Freie Universität Berlin