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arXiv:1507.01939 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Nonequilibrium many-body steady states via Keldysh formalism

Mohammad F. Maghrebi, Alexey Vyacheslavovich Gorshkov

Published Jan 27, 2016• 160 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Many-body systems with both coherent dynamics and dissipation constitute a rich class of models which are nevertheless much less explored than their dissipationless counterparts. The advent of numerous experimental platforms that simulate such dynamics poses an immediate challenge to systematically understand and classify these models. In particular, nontrivial many-body states emerge as steady states under nonequilibrium dynamics. While these states and their phase transitions have been studied extensively with mean-field theory, the validity of the mean-field approximation has not been systematically investigated. In this paper, we employ a field-theoretic approach based on the Keldysh formalism to study nonequilibrium phases and phase transitions in a variety of models. In all cases, a complete description via the Keldysh formalism indicates a partial or complete failure of the mean-field analysis. Furthermore, we find that an effective temperature emerges as a result of dissipation, and the universal behavior including the dynamics near the steady state is generically described by a thermodynamic universality class.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.93.014307

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Many-body systems with both coherent dynamics and dissipation constitute a rich class of models which are nevertheless much less explored than their dissipationless counterparts. The advent of numerous experimental platforms that simulate such dynamics poses an immediate challenge to systematically understand and classify these models. In particular, nontrivial many-body states emerge as steady states under nonequilibrium dynamics. While these states and their phase transitions have been studied extensively with mean-field theory, the validity of the mean-field approximation has not been systematically investigated. In this paper, we employ a field-theoretic approach based on the Keldysh formalism to study nonequilibrium phases and phase transitions in a variety of models. In all cases, a complete description via the Keldysh formalism indicates a partial or complete failure of the mean-field analysis. Furthermore, we find that an effective temperature emerges as a result of dissipation, and the universal behavior including the dynamics near the steady state is generically described by a thermodynamic universality class.
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Recent experimental advances in ultrafast phenomena have triggered renewed interest in the dynamics of correlated quantum systems away from equilibrium. We review nonequilibrium dynamical mean-field theory studies of both the transient and the steady states of a DC field-driven correlated quantum system. In particular, we focus on the nonequilibrium behavior and how it relates to the fluctuation-dissipation theorem. The fluctuation-dissipation theorem emerges as an indicator for how the system thermalizes and for how it reaches a steady state. When the system thermalizes in an infinite temperature steady state it can pass through a succession of quasi-thermal states that approximately obey the fluctuation-dissipation theorem. We also discuss the Wigner distribution and what its evolution tells us about the nonequilibrium many-body problem.
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Dynamical mean-field theory is generalized to solve the nonequilibrium Keldysh boundary problem: a system is started in equilibrium at a temperature T=0.1T=0.1T=0.1, a uniform electric field is turned on at t=0t=0t=0, and the system is monitored as it approaches the steady state. The focus here is on the Bloch oscillations of the current and how they decay after their initial appearance near t=0t=0t=0. The system is evolved out to the longest time allowed by our computational resources---in most cases we are unable to reach the steady state. The strongly correlated material is modeled by the spinless Falicov-Kimball model at half-filling on a hypercubic lattice in $d=\ensuremath{\infty}$ dimensions, which has a Mott-like metal-insulator transition at U=2U=\sqrt{2}U=2​. The computational algorithm employed is highly efficient, parallelizes well, and scales to thousands of processors. For strong fields, we find beats develop with a period of $2\ensuremath{\pi}∕U$, while for strong interactions, the Bloch oscillations are sharply damped and become quite irregular in time.
Recent experimental developments in diverse areas-ranging from cold atomic gases to light-driven semiconductors to microcavity arrays-move systems into the focus which are located on the interface of quantum optics, many-body physics and statistical mechanics. They share in common that coherent and driven-dissipative quantum dynamics occur on an equal footing, creating genuine non-equilibrium scenarios without immediate counterpart in equilibrium condensed matter physics. This concerns both their non-thermal stationary states and their many-body time evolution. It is a challenge to theory to identify novel instances of universal emergent macroscopic phenomena, which are tied unambiguously and in an observable way to the microscopic drive conditions. In this review, we discuss some recent results in this direction. Moreover, we provide a systematic introduction to the open system Keldysh functional integral approach, which is the proper technical tool to accomplish a merger of quantum optics and many-body physics, and leverages the power of modern quantum field theory to driven open quantum systems.