Interacting electrons with spin in a one-dimensional wire connected to leads

Abstract

We investigate a one--dimensional wire of interacting electrons connected to one--dimensional noninteracting leads in the absence and in the presence of a backscattering potential. The ballistic wire separates the charge and spin parts of an incident electron even in the noninteracting leads. The Fourier transform of nonlocal correlation functions are computed for $T\gg \omega$. In particular, this allows us to study the proximity effect, related to the Andreev reflection. A new type of proximity effect emerges when the wire has normally a tendency towards Wigner crystal formation. The latter is suppressed by the leads below a space--dependent crossover temperature; it gets dominated everywhere by the $2k_F$ CDW at $T<L^{3/2 (K-1)}$ for short range interactions with parameter $K<1/3$. The lowest--order renormalization equations of a weak backscattering potential are derived explicitly at finite temperature. A perturbative expression for the conductance in the presence of a potential with arbitrary spatial extension is given. It depends on the interactions, but is also affected by the noninteracting leads, especially for very repulsive interactions, $K<1/3$. This leads to various regimes, depending on temperature and on $K$. For randomly distributed weak impurities, we compute the conductance fluctuations, equal to that of $R=g-2e^2 /h$. While the behavior of $Var(R)$ depends on the interaction parameters, and is different for electrons with or without spin, and for $K<1/3$ or $K>1/3$, the ratio $Var(R)/R^2$ stays always of the same order: it is equal to $L_T/L\ll 1$ in the high temperature limit, then saturates at 1/2 in the low temperature limit, indicating that the relative fluctuations of $R$ increase as one lowers the temperature.