Transport in Luttinger liquids

Abstract

We give a brief introduction to Luttinger liquids and to the phenomena of electronic transport or conductance in quantum wires. We explain why the subject of transport in Luttinger liquids is relevant and fascinating and review some important results on tunneling through barriers in a one-dimensional quantum wire and the phenomena of persistent currents in mesoscopic rings. We give a brief description of our own work on transport through doubly-crossed Luttinger liquids and transport in the Schulz–Shastry exactly solvable Luttinger-like model. With a view to making this article accessible to researchers in diverse fields such as nuclear physics, particle physics, formal field theory and condensed matter physics, we begin by first giving a brief introduction. In Sec. 1, we explain the words such as "Luttinger liquid" and "transport" in the title. We also motivate the study of this subject by showing that field is very important at the current time from the applications point of view and describe why it is theoretically fascinating. We then give a quick review of some of the important results in the field in Sec. 2, before we go on to describe some work that we have recently done and are doing in this field in Sec. 3. Finally, in Sec. 4, we conclude by re-emphasizing the importance of this area and drawing attention towards future possibilities.