Charge and spin fractionalization beyond the Luttinger-liquid paradigm

Abstract

It is well established that at low energies one-dimensional (1D) fermionic systems are described by the Luttinger-liquid (LL) theory, which predicts phenomena such as spin-charge separation and charge fractionalization into chiral modes. Here we show through the time evolution of an electron injected into a 1D t-J model, obtained with time-dependent density matrix renormalization group, that a further fractionalization of both charge and spin takes place beyond the hydrodynamic limit. Its dynamics can be understood at the supersymmetric point (J = 2t) in terms of the excitations of the Bethe-ansatz solution. Furthermore we show that fractionalization with similar characteristics extends to the whole region corresponding to a repulsive LL.