Exotic critical states as fractional Fermi seas in the one-dimensional Bose gas

Abstract:Critical quantum field theories occupy a central position in modern theoretical physics for their inherent universality stemming from long-range correlations. As an example, the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) describes a wealth of one-dimensional quantum systems at low temperatures. Its behavior is deeply rooted in the emergence of an effective Fermi sea, leading to power-law correlations and Friedel oscillations. A promising direction to realize systems exhibiting novel universal behavior beyond TLL is through the generalization of the underlying Fermi sea. In this Letter, we show that fractional Fermi seas with reduced occupancy arise in an integrable Bose gas driven out of equilibrium by cyclic changes in interactions from repulsive to attractive. The correlation functions feature signatures of criticality incompatible with a conventional TLL, suggesting a novel critical phase. Our predictions, based on Generalized Hydrodynamics, are directly relevant to cold atoms.

Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas); Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech); Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

arXiv:2602.17656 [cond-mat.quant-gas]

(or arXiv:2602.17656v2 [cond-mat.quant-gas] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2602.17656 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 230402 (2026)

https://doi.org/10.1103/j3s5-gjpf Focus to learn more DOI(s) linking to related resources

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