Sliding Luttinger liquid phases

Abstract

We study systems of coupled spin-gapped and gapless Luttinger liquids. First, we establish the existence of a sliding Luttinger liquid phase for a system of weakly coupled parallel quantum wires, with and without disorder. It is shown that the coupling can stabilize a Luttinger liquid phase in the presence of disorder. We then extend our analysis to a system of crossed Luttinger liquids and establish the stability of a non-Fermi-liquid state: the crossed sliding Luttinger liquid phase. In this phase the system exhibits a finite-temperature, long-wavelength, isotropic electric conductivity that diverges as a power law in temperature T as $\stackrel{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}{T}0.$ This two-dimensional system has many properties of a true isotropic Luttinger liquid, though at zero temperature it becomes anisotropic. An extension of this model to a three-dimensional stack exhibits a much higher in-plane conductivity than the conductivity in a perpendicular direction.