Interface resistances and AC transport in a Luttinger liquid

Abstract

We consider a Luttinger liquid (LL) connected to two reservoirs when the two sample-reservoir interface resistances $R_{S}$ and $R_{D}$ are arbitrary (not necessarily quantized at half-the-quantum of resistance). We compute exactly the dynamical impedance of a Luttinger liquid and generalize earlier expressions for its dynamical conductance in the following situations. (i) We first consider a gated Luttinger liquid. It is shown that the Luttinger liquid parameters $u$ and $K$ and the interface resistances $R_{S}$ and $% R_{D}$ can be experimentally determined by measuring both the dynamical conductance and impedance of a gated wire at second order in frequency. The parallel law addition for the charge relaxation resistance $R_{q}$ is explicitly recovered for these non-trivial interface resistances as $R_{q}^{-1} = R_{S}^{-1} + R_{D}^{-1}$. (ii) We discuss the AC response when only one electrode is connected to the LL. (iii) Thirdly we consider application of an arbitrary AC electric field along the sample and compute the dynamical response of the LL with arbitrary interface resistances. The discussion is then specialized to the case of a uniform electric field.