Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 115302 (2013) [5 pages]

Phase Transitions for a Collective Coordinate Coupled to Luttinger Liquids

Baruch Horovitz
Department of Physics, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva 84105, Israel

Thierry Giamarchi
DPMC-MaNEP, University of Geneva, 24 Quai Ernest Ansermet, 1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland

Pierre Le Doussal
CNRS-Laboratoire de Physique Théorique de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure, 24 rue Lhomond, 75231 Cedex 05 Paris, France

Received 27 November 2012; revised 2 April 2013; published 9 September 2013

We study various realizations of collective coordinates, e.g., the position of a particle, the charge of a Coulomb box, or the phase of a Bose or a superconducting condensate, coupled to Luttinger liquids with N flavors. We find that for a Luttinger parameter (1/2)<K<1 there is a phase transition from a delocalized phase into a phase with a periodic potential at strong coupling. In the delocalized phase the dynamics is dominated by an effective mass, i.e., diffusive in imaginary time, while on the transition line it becomes dissipative. At K=(1/2) there is an additional transition into a localized phase with no diffusion at zero temperature.

URL: http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.115302

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.115302

PACS: 67.85.-d, 03.75.Hh, 05.30.Rt, 71.10.Pm

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