Metallic stripes: Separation of spin, charge, and string fluctuation

Inspired by the cuprate stripes, we consider the problem of a one-dimensional metal living on a delocalized trajectory in two dimensional space: the metallic lattice string. A model is constructed with maximal coupling between longitudinal and transversal charge motions, which nevertheless renormalizes into a minimal generalization of the Luttinger liquid: an independent set of string modes has to be added to the long-wavelength theory, with a dynamics governed by the quantum sine-Gordon model.