Are there sharp fractional charges in Luttinger liquids?

Abstract

We examine charge fractionalization by chiral separation in a one-dimensional fermion system described by Luttinger liquid theory. The focus is on the question of whether the fractional charges are quantum mechanically sharp, and in the analysis we make a distinction between the global charge, which is restricted by boundary conditions, and the local charge where a background contribution is subtracted. We show, by way of examples, that fractional charges of arbitrary values, all which are quantum mechanically sharp, can be introduced by different initial conditions. Since the system is gapless, excitations of arbitrary low frequency contribute to the fluctuations, it is important to make a precise definition of sharp charges, and this we we do by subtraction of the ground state contribution. We very briefly comment on the relevance of our analysis for proposed experiments.

One reference updated

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• Transient Features in Charge Fractionalization, Local Equilibration and Non-equilibrium Bosonization
• Charge Fractionalization in a Mesoscopic Ring
• Luttinger liquids, Fermi liquids and fractional statistics
• Nonlinear effects on charge fractionalization in critical chains
• Proposal for bulk measurement of braid statistics in fractional quantum Hall effect
• Fractional charges in emergent neutral modes at the integer quantum Hall effect