Momentum-resolved tunneling between Luttinger liquids

Abstract

We study tunneling between two nearby cleaved edge quantum wires in a perpendicular magnetic field. Due to Coulomb forces between electrons, the wires form a strongly-interacting pair of Luttinger liquids. We calculate the low-temperature differential tunneling conductance, in which singular features map out the dispersion relations of the fractionalized quasiparticles of the system. The velocities of several such spin-charge separated excitations can be explicitly observed. Moreover, the proposed measurement directly demonstrates the splintering of the tunneling electrons into a multi-particle continuum of these quasiparticles, carrying separately charge from spin. A variety of corrections to the simple Luttinger model are also discussed.