2006/11/29 by S. H. Abedinpour, M. Polini, Gao Xianlong +2 · 1 citation
Chemistry · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Physical and Chemical Molecular Interactions #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Topological Materials and Phenomena #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1140/epjb/e2007-00099-1
published as Eur. J. Phys. B 56, 127 (2007) · 8 pages, 7 figures, submitted
arxiv created 2006/11/29 · openalex publication_date 2007/03/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Motivated by current interest in strongly correlated quasi-one-dimensional (1D) Luttinger liquids subject to axial confinement, we present a novel density-functional study of few-electron systems confined by power-low external potentials inside a short portion of a thin quantum wire. The theory employs the 1D homogeneous Coulomb liquid as the reference system for a Kohn-Sham treatment and transfers the Luttinger ground-state correlations to the inhomogeneous electron system by means of a suitable local-density approximation (LDA) to the exchange-correlation energy functional. We show that such 1D-adapted LDA is appropriate for fluid-like states at weak coupling, but fails to account for the transition to a ``Wigner molecules'' regime of electron localization as observed in thin quantum wires at very strong coupling. A detailed analyzes is given for the two-electron problem under axial harmonic confinement.