Fermionic Luttinger liquids from a microscopic perspective

Abstract: We consider interacting one-dimensional, spinless Fermi gases, whose low-energy properties are described by Luttinger liquid theory. We perform a systematic, in-depth analysis of the relation between the macroscopic, phenomenological parameters of Luttinger liquid effective field theory, and the microscopic interactions of the Fermi gas. In particular, we begin by explaining how to model effective interactions in one dimension, which we then apply to the main forward scattering channel -- the interbranch collisions -- common to these systems. We renormalise the corresponding interbranch phenomenological constants in favour of scattering phase shifts. Interestingly, our renormalisation procedure shows (i) how Luttinger's model arises in a completely natural way -- and not as a convenient approximation -- from Tomonaga's model, and (ii) the reasons behind the interbranch coupling constant remaining unrenormalised in Luttinger's model. We then consider the so-called intrabranch processes, whose phenomenological coupling constant is known to be fixed by charge conservation, but whose microscopic origin is not well understood. We show that, contrary to general belief and common sense, the intrabranch interactions appearing in Luttinger liquid theory do not correspond to an intrabranch scattering channel, nor an energy shift due to intrabranch interactions, in the microscopic theory. Instead, they are due to interbranch processes. We finally apply our results to a particular example of an exactly solvable model, namely the fermionic dual to the Lieb-Liniger model in the Tonks-Girardeau and super-Tonks-Girardeau regimes.