Momentum-space modulated symmetries in the Luttinger liquid

Abstract

The chiral Luttinger liquid develops quantum chaos as soon as a—however slight—nonlinear dispersion is introduced for the microscopic electronic degrees of freedom. For this nonlinear version of the model, we identify an infinite family of translation-invariant interaction potentials with corresponding modulated symmetries. These symmetries are highly unconventional: they are modulated in momentum space (and do not seem to have an easy physical interpretation). We develop a systematic understanding of these symmetries and study the resulting blocks in the Hamiltonian. In particular, this approach allows us to predict the analytic Hamiltonian block sizes and derive asymptotic scaling laws in the limit of large total momentum. These blocks are reminiscent of Hilbert space fragmentation in that, even though they are labeled by a symmetry, this symmetry is highly nonlocal and does not have a simple interpretation. We corroborate this result by studying entanglement entropy and level statistics. Published by the American Physical Society 2025