Coulomb interaction driven instabilities of sliding Luttinger liquids

Abstract

We study systems made of periodic arrays of one dimensional quantum wires, coupled by Coulomb interaction. Using bosonization an interacting metallic fixed point is obtained, which is shown to be a higher dimensional analogue of the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid, or a sliding Luttinger liquid. This non-Fermi liquid metallic state, however, is unstable in the presence of weak interwire backscatterings, which favor charge density wave states and suppress pairing. Depending on the effective strength of the Coulomb repulsion and the size of interwire spacing various charge density wave states are stabilized, including Wigner crystal states. Our method allows for the determination of the specific ordering patterns, and corresponding energy and temperature scales.