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arXiv:0806.2236 · Europhysics Letters (EPL)

Negative differential conductivity in far-from-equilibrium quantum spin chains

Giuliano Benenti, Giulio Casati, Tomaž Prosen, Davide Rossini

Published Feb 1, 2009• 75 citations
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Abstract

We show that, when a finite anisotropic Heisenberg spin-1/2 chain in the gapped regime is driven far from equilibrium, oppositely polarized ferromagnetic domains build up at the edges of the chain, thus suppressing quantum spin transport. As a consequence, a negative differential conductivity regime arises, where increasing the driving decreases the current. The above results are explained in terms of magnon localization and are shown to be structurally stable against breaking of integrability.

DOI
10.1209/0295-5075/85/37001

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We show that, when a finite anisotropic Heisenberg spin-1/2 chain in the gapped regime is driven far from equilibrium, oppositely polarized ferromagnetic domains build up at the edges of the chain, thus suppressing quantum spin transport. As a consequence, a negative differential conductivity regime arises, where increasing the driving decreases the current. The above results are explained in terms of magnon localization and are shown to be structurally stable against breaking of integrability.
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We investigate the spin transport properties of an isotropic quantum Heisenberg spin-chain. Driving the system out of equilibrium via two different reservoirs at the boundaries, the system exhibits negative differential conductivity for strong driving. We describe the system-reservoir interaction with a Lindblad approach. We show that the interplay between Lindblad dynamics and system dynamics influences highly the spin current. For weak driving, equal rates maximize the current while strong driving shows a counter intuitive behavior. Our findings could guide to an understanding of the transport properties which are dependent on the external driving.
In XXZ chains with large enough interactions, spin transport can be significantly suppressed when the bias of the dissipative driving becomes large enough. This phenomenon of negative differential conductance is caused by the formation of two oppositely polarized ferromagnetic domains at the edges of the chain. Here, we show that this many-body effect, combined with a non-uniform magnetic field, can allow for a high degree of control of the spin current. In particular, by studying all of the possible shapes of local magnetic fields potentials, we find that a configuration in which the magnetic field points up for half of the chain and down for the other half, can result in giant spin-current rectification, for example, up to 108 for a system with only 8 spins. Our results show clear indications that the rectification can increase with the system size.
We investigate the Heisenberg XXZXXZXXZ chain with long-range interactions in the ZZZ dimension. By applying two magnetic boundary reservoirs, we drive the system out of equilibrium and induce a nonzero steady-state current. The long-range coupled chain shows nearly ballistic transport and linear response for all potential differences of the external reservoirs. In contrast, the common isotropic nearest-neighbor coupling shows negative differential conductivity and a transition from diffusive to subdiffusive transport for a far-from-equilibrium driving. Adding disorder, the change in the transport for nearest-neighbor coupling is therefore highly dependent on the driving. We find for the disordered long-range coupled XXZXXZXXZ chain, any change in the transport behavior is independent of the potential difference and the coupling strengths of the external reservoirs.
We study an open Heisenberg XXZ spin chain with long-range Ising-type interaction, which is incoherently driven at its boundaries and, therefore, a far-from-equilibrium steady-state current is induced. Quantum Monte Carlo techniques make a regime accessible where the system size is large enough to examine the transition from a diffusive to a ballistic transport regime. We find that the chain lengths for this transition are increasing with decreasing range of the Ising-type interactions between distant spins, whereas the strength of the incoherent driving does not have a relevant effect on the transport transition. The transition can be explained by the suppression of ferromagnetic domains at the edges of the chain.