Singular responses of spin-incoherent Luttinger liquids

When a local potential changes abruptly in time, an electron gas responds by shifting to a new state which at long times is orthogonal to the one in the absence of the local potential. This is known as Anderson's orthogonality catastrophe and it is relevant for the so-called x-ray edge or Fermi-edge singularity, and for tunneling into an interacting one-dimensional system of fermions. It often happens that the finite frequency response of the photon absorption or the tunneling density of states exhibits a singular behavior as a function of frequency: (omega(th)/omega-omega(th))(alpha)Theta(omega - omega(th)), where omega(th) is a threshold frequency and alpha is an exponent characterizing the singular response. In this review singular responses of spin-incoherent Luttinger liquids are reviewed. Such responses most often do not fall into the familiar form above, but instead typically exhibit logarithmic corrections and display a much higher universality in terms of the microscopic interactions in the theory. Specific predictions are made, the current experimental situation is summarized and key outstanding theoretical issues related to spin-incoherent Luttinger liquids are highlighted.