Impurity in a Luttinger liquid: a numerical study of the finite size energy spectrum and of the orthogonality catastrophe exponent

Abstract

The behavior of a single impurity in a one-dimensional Luttinger liquid is numerically investigated by means of the density matrix renormalization group. By analyzing the finite size scaling behavior of the low energy spectrum, we confirm the theoretical prediction of Kane and Fisher [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 68}, 1220 (1992)] both for attractive and repulsive interactions. Moreover, we calculate the exponent of the orthogonality catastrophe, which gives a further support to the above theoretical prediction.