Bosonization out of equilibrium

Abstract

We develop a bosonization technique for one-dimensional fermions out of equilibrium. The approach is used to study a quantum wire attached to two electrodes with arbitrary energy distributions. The non-equilibrium electron Green function is expressed in terms of functional determinants of a single-particle``counting'' operator with a time-dependent scattering phase. The result reveals an intrinsic relation of dephasing and energy redistribution in Luttinger-liquids to ``fractionalization'' of electron-hole excitations in the tunneling process and at boundaries with leads.