Eur. Phys. J. D (2015) 69: 224
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2015-60386-x

Regular Article

Kinetic theory for interacting Luttinger liquids

¹ Institut für Theoretische Physik, Technische Universität Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany
² Institut für Theoretische Physik, Leopold-Franzens Universität Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria

^a e-mail: michael.buchhold@uibk.ac.at

Received: 30 June 2015
Received in final form: 30 July 2015
Published online: 6 October 2015

Abstract

We derive a closed set of equations for the kinetics and non-equilibrium dynamics of interacting Luttinger Liquids with cubic resonant interactions. In the presence of these interactions, the Luttinger phonons become dressed but still well defined quasi-particles, characterized by a life-time much larger then the inverse energy. This enables the separation of forward time dynamics and relative time dynamics into slow and fast dynamics and justifies the so-called Wigner approximation, which can be seen as a “local-time approximation” for the relative dynamics. Applying field theoretical methods in the Keldysh framework, i.e. kinetic and Dyson-Schwinger equations, we derive a closed set of dynamic equations, describing the kinetics of normal and anomalous phonon densities, the phonon self-energy and vertex corrections for a Gaussian non-equilibrium initial state. In the limit of low phonon densities, the results from self-consistent Born approximation are recaptured, including Andreev’s scaling solution for the quasi-particle life-time in a thermal state. As an application, we compute the relaxation of an excited state to its thermal equilibrium. While the intermediate time dynamics displays exponentially fast relaxation, the last stages of thermalization are governed by algebraic laws. This can be traced back to the importance of energy and momentum conservation at the longest times, which gives rise to dynamical slow modes.