  The nature of charge transport within a correlated background medium can be
described by spinless fermions coupled to bosons in the model introduced by
Edwards. Combining numerical density matrix renormalization group and
analytical projector-based renormalization methods we explore the ground-state
phase diagram of the Edwards model in one dimension. Below a critical boson
frequency any long-range order disappears and the system becomes metallic. If
the charge carriers are coupled to slow quantum bosons the Tomonaga-Luttinger
liquid is attractive and finally makes room for a phase separated state, just
as in the t-J model. The phase boundary separating repulsive from the
attractive Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid is determined from long-wavelength charge
correlations, whereas fermion segregation is indicated by a vanishing inverse
compressibility. On approaching phase separation the photoemission spectra
develop strong anomalies.
