Plasmon decay and thermal transport from spin-charge coupling in generic Luttinger liquids

TL;DR

This paper explores how spin-charge coupling in nonlinear Luttinger liquids causes plasmon decay, affecting thermal transport in quantum wires by deriving kinetic equations and analyzing thermal conductance.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of plasmon decay due to spin-charge coupling and provides a framework for understanding thermal transport in nonlinear Luttinger liquids.

Findings

Plasmons decay into spin modes due to nonlinear effects.

Derived coupled kinetic equations for spin-charge excitations.

Analyzed thermal conductance for various wire lengths and thermalization lengths.

Abstract

We discuss the violation of spin-charge separation in generic nonlinear Luttinger liquids and investigate its effect on the relaxation and thermal transport of genuine spin-1/2 electron liquids in ballistic quantum wires. We identify basic scattering processes compatible with the symmetry of the problem and conservation laws that lead to the decay of plasmons into the spin modes. We derive a closed set of coupled kinetic equations for the spin-charge excitations and solve the problem of thermal conductance of interacting electrons for an arbitrary relation between the quantum wire length and spin-charge thermalization length.