English

The two-particle density matrix of a Luttinger liquid

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2026-07-15 v1

Abstract

Two-particle coherence is the first level of the reduced-density-matrix hierarchy that contains correlations inaccessible to single-particle observables, yet analytic two-particle density matrices are rare even in one dimension. We derive a closed, finite-size expression for the equal-time two-particle reduced density matrix of spinless fermions in a Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid using constructive bosonization with an explicit ultraviolet cutoff. In addition to the familiar Luttinger parameter KK-dependent exponent γ2=(K+K12)/2\gamma^2=(K+K^{-1}-2)/2 which governs the spatial decay of matrix elements, the result exposes a second exponent, λ=(K1K)/2\lambda=(K^{-1}-K)/2, which encodes correlations between opposite chiralities and controls the off-diagonal structure. The diagonal limit of the two-particle reduced density matrix yields density correlations and the static structure factor, while its coherences resolve algebraic 2kF2k_F charge-density-wave correlations for repulsion and odd-parity p-wave pairing correlations for attraction. After fixing the cutoff from the one-particle density matrix, the analytic result quantitatively reproduces density matrix renormalization group calculations of the interacting J-V chain within the Luttinger liquid regime. The result connects universal Luttinger liquid scaling with observables in finite microscopic systems.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.14402,
  title  = {The two-particle density matrix of a Luttinger liquid},
  author = {Harini Radhakrishnan and Matthias Thamm and Hatem Barghathi and Bernd Rosenow and Adrian Del Maestro},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.14402},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

24 pages, 14 figures. For associated data and code repository see: https://github.com/DelMaestroGroup/papers-code-TwoRDMLuttingerLiquid