Thermal transport and quench relaxation in nonlinear Luttinger liquids

Abstract

One-dimensional electrons with a linearized dispersion relation are equivalent to a collection of harmonic plasmon modes, which represent long wavelength density oscillations. An immediate consequence of this Luttinger model of one-dimensional electron systems is the absence of inelastic scattering processes responsible for the relaxation of nonequilibrium states. In a generic nonlinear Luttinger liquid plasmons may decay and thus acquire a finite lifetime. We show that equilibration of plasmons is hierarchical and has profound implications for the dynamics after a thermal quench. We also develop a thermal transport theory and compute thermal conductance of the nonlinear Luttinger liquid by treating the collision integral of plasmons in a manifestly nonperturbative way.