A brief introduction to Luttinger liquids

Abstract

I give a brief introduction to Luttinger liquids. Luttinger liquids are paramagnetic one-dimensional metals without Landau quasi-particle excitations. The elementary excitations are collective charge and spin modes, leading to charge-spin separation. Correlation functions exhibit power-law behavior. All physical properties can be calculated, e.g. by bosonization, and depend on three parameters only: the renormalized coupling constant $K_{\rho}$, and the charge and spin velocities. I also discuss the stability of Luttinger liquids with respect to temperature, interchain coupling, lattice effects and phonons, and list important open problems.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, to be published in the Proceedings of the International Winterschool on Electronic Properties of Novel Materials 2000, Kirchberg, March 4-11, 200