Nonequilibrium kinetics of a disordered Luttinger liquid

Understand

We develop a kinetic theory for strongly correlated disordered one-dimensional electron systems out of equilibrium, within the Luttinger liquid model.

• In the absence of inhomogeneities, the model exhibits no relaxation to equilibrium.
• We derive kinetic equations for electron and plasmon distribution functions in the presence of impurities and calculate the equilibration rate $\gamma_E$.
• Remarkably, for not too low temperature and bias voltage, $\gamma_E$ is given by the elastic backscattering rate, independent of the strength of electron-electron interaction, temperature, and bias.