Competing regimes of motion in 1D mobile impurities

Abstract

We show that a distinguishable mobile impurity inside a one-dimensional many-body state at zero temperature generally does not behave like a quasiparticle (QP). Instead, both the impurities dynamics as well as the ground state of the bath are fundamentally transformed by a diverging number of zero-energy excitations being generated, leading to what we call infrared-dominated (ID) dynamics. Combining analytics and DMRG numerics we provide a general formula for the power law governing ID dynamics at zero momentum, discuss a threshold beyond which quasiparticle dynamics may occur again, and study the competition between the ID and quasiparticle universality classes at larger impurity momenta.

4+ pages, 3 figures. Title has been changed in response to editorial comments. Abstract has been reworked. Main text has been significantly restructured and figures reworked. 4+ pages Supplementary Materials have been added, including 3 additional figures