Transport in Double-Crossed Luttinger Liquids

Abstract

We study transport through two Luttinger liquids (one-dimensional electrons interacting through a Coulomb repulsion in a metal) coupled together at {\it two} points. External voltage biases are incorporated through boundary conditions. We include density-density couplings as well as single-particle hops at the contacts. For weak repulsive interactions, transport through the wires remains undisturbed by the inter-wire couplings, which renormalise to zero. For strong repulsive interactions, the inter-wire couplings become strong. For symmetric barriers and no external voltage bias, a single gate voltage is sufficient to tune for resonance transmission in both wires. However, for asymmetric couplings or for finite external biases, the system is insulating.