Title: Optical conductivity of a quasi–one-dimensional system with fluctuating order
Abstract: We describe a formally exact method to calculate the optical conductivity of a one-dimensional system with fluctuating order. For classical phase fluctuations we explicitly determine the optical conductivity by solving two coupled Fokker-Planck equations numerically. Our results differ considerably from perturbation theory and, in contrast to Gaussian order parameter fluctuations, show a strong dependence on the correlation length.