Effects of finite-range interactions on the one-electron spectral properties of one-dimensional metals: Application to Bi/InSb(001)

TL;DR

This paper investigates how finite-range electron interactions influence the spectral properties of one-dimensional metals, applying the theory to ARPES experiments on Bi/InSb(001) and finding quantitative agreement with observed spectral features.

Contribution

The study introduces a universal framework for describing spectral functions in 1D metals with finite-range interactions, extending beyond the standard Luttinger liquid model.

Findings

Universal phase shift description of spectral functions

Quantitative match with ARPES data on Bi/InSb(001)

Explicit momentum-dependent exponents derived

Abstract

We study the one-electron spectral properties of one-dimensional interacting electron systems in which the interactions have finite range. We employ a mobile quantum impurity scheme that describes the interactions of the fractionalized excitations at energies above the standard Tomonga-Luttinger liquid limit and show that the phase shifts induced by the impurity describe universal properties of the one-particle spectral function. We find the explicit forms in terms of these phase shifts for the momentum dependent exponents that control the behavior of the spectral function near and at the (k,omega)-plane singularities where most of the spectral weight is located. The universality arises because the line shape near the singularities is independent of the short-distance part of the interaction potentials. For the class of potentials considered here, the charge fractionalized particles have screened Coulomb interactions that decay with a power-law exponent l>5. We apply the theory to the angle-resolved photo-electron spectroscopy (ARPES) in the highly one-dimensional bismuth-induced anisotropic structure on indium antimonide Bi/InSb(001). Our theoretical predictions agree quantitatively with both (i) the experimental value found in Bi/InSb(001) for the exponent alpha that controls the suppression of the density of states at very small excitation energy omega and (ii) the location in the (k,omega) plane of the experimentally observed high-energy peaks in the ARPES momentum and energy distributions. We conclude with a discussion of experimental properties beyond the range of our present theoretical framework and further open questions regarding the one-electron spectral properties of Bi/InSb(001).