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arXiv:1107.3103 · Physical Review Letters

Spin Transport in the X X Z Chain at Finite Temperature and Momentum

Robin Steinigeweg, Wolfram Brenig

Published Dec 16, 2011• 76 citations
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Abstract

We investigate the role of momentum for the transport of magnetization in the spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain above the isotropic point at finite temperature and momentum. Using numerical and analytical approaches, we analyze the autocorrelations of density and current and observe a finite region of the Brillouin zone with diffusive dynamics below a cutoff momentum, and a diffusion constant independent of momentum and time, which scales inversely with anisotropy. Lowering the temperature over a wide range, starting from infinity, the diffusion constant is found to increase strongly while the cutoff momentum for diffusion decreases. Above the cutoff momentum diffusion breaks down completely.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.107.250602

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We investigate the role of momentum for the transport of magnetization in the spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain above the isotropic point at finite temperature and momentum. Using numerical and analytical approaches, we analyze the autocorrelations of density and current and observe a finite region of the Brillouin zone with diffusive dynamics below a cutoff momentum, and a diffusion constant independent of momentum and time, which scales inversely with anisotropy. Lowering the temperature over a wide range, starting from infinity, the diffusion constant is found to increase strongly while the cutoff momentum for diffusion decreases. Above the cutoff momentum diffusion breaks down completely.
The transport of magnetization is analyzed for the classical Heisenberg chain at and especially above the isotropic point. To this end, the Hamiltonian equations of motion are solved numerically for initial states realizing harmonic-like magnetization profiles of small amplitude and with random phases. Above the isotropic point, the resulting dynamics is observed to be diffusive in a hydrodynamic regime starting at comparatively small times and wave lengths. In particular, hydrodynamic regime and diffusion constant are both found to be in quantitative agreement with close-to-equilibrium results from quantum S =1/2 autocorrelations at high temperatures. At the isotropic point, the resulting dynamics turns out to be non-diffusive at the considered times and wave lengths.
The isotropic Heisenberg chain represents a particular case of an integrable many-body system exhibiting superdiffusive spin transport at finite temperatures. Here, we show that this model has distinct properties also at finite magnetization $m\ensuremath{\ne}0$, even upon introducing the SU(2) invariant perturbations. Specifically, we observe nonmonotonic dependence of the diffusion constant ${\mathcal{D}}_{0}(\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}})$ on the spin anisotropy $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}$, with a pronounced maximum at $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}=1$. The latter dependence remains true also in the zero magnetization sector, with superdiffusion at $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}=1$ that is remarkably stable against isotropic perturbation (at least in finite-size systems), consistent with recent experiments with cold atoms.
We investigate transport in several translationally invariant spin-12\frac{1}{2}21​ chains in the limit of high temperatures. We concretely consider spin transport in the anisotropic Heisenberg chain, the pure Heisenberg chain within an alternating field, and energy transport in an Ising chain which is exposed to a tilted field. Our approach is essentially based on a connection between the evolution of the variance of an inhomogeneous nonequilibrium density and the current-autocorrelation function at finite times. Although this relationship is not restricted to the case of diffusive transport, it allows to extract a quantitative value for the diffusion constant in that case. By means of numerically exact diagonalization we indeed observe diffusive behavior in the considered spin chains for a range of model parameters and confirm the diffusion coefficients which were obtained for these systems from nonequilibrium bath scenarios.
We study spin transport in the one-dimensional anisotropic S=1S=1S=1 Heisenberg model. Particular emphasis is given to dynamics at infinite temperature, where current autocorrelations and spatiotemporal correlation functions are obtained by means of an efficient pure-state approach based on the concept of typicality. Our comprehensive numerical analysis unveils that high-temperature spin transport is diffusive in the easy-axis regime for strong exchange anisotropies. This finding is based on the combination of numerous signatures, such as (i) Gaussian spreading of correlations, (ii) a time-independent diffusion coefficient, (iii) power-law decay of equal-site correlations, (iv) exponentially decaying long-wavelength modes, and (v) Lorentzian line shapes of the dynamical structure factor. Moreover, we provide evidence that some of these signatures are not exclusively restricted to the infinite-temperature limit but can persist at lower temperatures as well, where we complement our results by additional quantum Monte Carlo simulations of large systems. In contrast to the easy-axis regime, we show that in the case of an isotropic chain, the signatures (i)--(v) are much less pronounced or even entirely absent, suggesting the existence of anomalous spin transport despite the nonintegrability of the model. Eventually, upon introducing a random on-site magnetic field, we observe a breakdown of diffusion and distinctly slower dynamics. In particular, our results exhibit qualitative similarities to disordered spin-1/21/21/2 chains and might be consistent with the onset of many-body localization in the S=1S=1S=1 model for sufficiently strong disorder.
Spin transport in the anisotropic Heisenberg chain is typically investigated theoretically with respect to the finiteness of transport coefficients only. Assuming their finiteness at high temperatures, we develop a concrete quantitative picture of the diffusion constant/(dc-)conductivity as a function of both the anisotropy parameter Δ and the spin quantum number s, going beyond the most commonly considered case s=1/2. Using this picture, we enable the comparison of finite transport coefficients from complementary theoretical methods on a quantitative level, having more significance than the finiteness alone. Our method is essentially based on an application of the time-convolutionless projection operator technique to current autocorrelations. This technique, although being a perturbation theory in Δ, is found to be applicable, even if Δ is not small. This finding supports the applicability to a wider class of strongly interacting many-particle quantum systems.
We address the nature of spin transport in the integrable XXZ spin chain, focusing on the isotropic Heisenberg limit. We calculate the diffusion constant using a kinetic picture based on generalized hydrodynamics combined with Gaussian fluctuations: we find that it diverges, and show that a self-consistent treatment of this divergence gives superdiffusion, with an effective time-dependent diffusion constant that scales as D(t)∼t^{1/3}. This exponent had previously been observed in large-scale numerical simulations, but had not been theoretically explained. We briefly discuss XXZ models with easy-axis anisotropy Δ>1. Our method gives closed-form expressions for the diffusion constant D in the infinite-temperature limit for all Δ>1. We find that D saturates at large anisotropy, and diverges as the Heisenberg limit is approached, as D∼(Δ-1)^{-1/2}.