Is spin-charge separation observable in a transport experiment?

We consider a one-dimensional chain consisting of an interacting area coupled to non-interacting leads. Within the area, interaction is mediated by a local on-site repulsion. Using real-time evolution within the density matrix renormalisation group (DMRG) scheme, we study the dynamics of wave packets in this two-terminal transport setup. In contrast to previous works, where excitations were created by adding potentials to the Hamiltonian, we explicitly create left-moving single-particle excitations in the right lead as the starting condition. Our simulations show that such a transport setup allows for a clear detection of spin-charge separation using time-resolved spin-polarised density measurements. Copyright (C) EPLA, 2009