Equilibration of a one-dimensional Wigner crystal

Equilibration of a one-dimensional system of interacting electrons requires processes that change the numbers of left- and right-moving particles. At low temperatures such processes are strongly suppressed, resulting in slow relaxation towards equilibrium. We study this phenomenon in the case of spinless electrons with strong long-range repulsion, when the electrons form a one-dimensional Wigner crystal. We find the relaxation rate by accounting for the Umklapp scattering of phonons in the crystal. For the integrable model of particles with inverse-square repulsion, the relaxation rate vanishes.