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arXiv:1609.06483 · Journal of Physics A Mathematical and Theoretical

Finite speed heat transport in a quantum spin chain after quenched local cooling

Pascal Fries, Haye Hinrichsen B

Published Feb 20, 2017• 0 citations
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Abstract

Abstract We study the dynamics of an initially thermalized spin chain in the quantum XY-model, after sudden coupling to a heat bath of lower temperature at one end of the chain. In the semi-classical limit we see an exponential decay of the system-bath heatflux by exact solution of the reduced dynamics. In the full quantum description however, we numerically find the heatflux to reach intermediate plateaus where it is approximately constant—a phenomenon that we attribute to the finite speed of heat transport via spin waves.

DOI
10.1088/1751-8121/aa617a

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Abstract We study the dynamics of an initially thermalized spin chain in the quantum XY-model, after sudden coupling to a heat bath of lower temperature at one end of the chain. In the semi-classical limit we see an exponential decay of the system-bath heatflux by exact solution of the reduced dynamics. In the full quantum description however, we numerically find the heatflux to reach intermediate plateaus where it is approximately constant—a phenomenon that we attribute to the finite speed of heat transport via spin waves.
We investigate the dissipative dynamics of a quantum critical system in contact with a thermal bath, focusing on the response of the system to a sudden change of the bath temperature, in analogy to studies of aging. The specific example of the XY model in a transverse magnetic field whose spins are locally coupled to a set of bosonic baths is considered. We analyze the spin-spin correlations and block correlations and identify some universal features in the out-of-equilibrium dynamics. Two distinct regimes, characterized by different time and length scales, emerge. The initial transient dynamics is characterized by the same critical exponents as those of the equilibrium quantum phase transition and resembles the dynamics of thermal phase transitions. At long times equilibrium is reached through the propagation along the chain of a thermal front in a manner similar to the classical Glauber dynamics.
We study heat transport in a one-dimensional inhomogeneous quantum spin-1/2 system. It consists of a finite-size XXXXXX spin chain coupled at its ends to semi-infinite XXXXXX and XYXYXY chains at different temperatures, which play the role of heat and spin reservoirs. After using the Jordan-Wigner transformation we map the original spin Hamiltonian into a fermionic Hamiltonian, which contains normal and pairing terms. We find the expressions for the heat currents and solve the problem with a nonequilibrium Green's-function formalism. We analyze the behavior of the heat currents as functions of the model parameters. When finite magnetic fields are applied at the two reservoirs, the system exhibits rectifying effects in the heat flow.
We study thermal transport in a classical one-dimensional Heisenberg model employing a discrete-time odd-even precessional update scheme. This dynamics equilibrates a spin chain for any arbitrary temperature and finite value of the integration time step $\ensuremath{\Delta}t$. We rigorously show that in presence of driving, the system attains local thermal equilibrium, which is a strict requirement of Fourier law. In the thermodynamic limit, heat current for such a system obeys Fourier law for all temperatures, as has been recently shown [A. V. Savin, G. P. Tsironis, and X. Zotos, Phys. Rev. B 72, 140402(R) (2005)]. Finite systems, however, show an apparent ballistic transport which crosses over to a diffusive one as the system size is increased. We provide exact results for current and energy profiles in zero- and infinite-temperature limits.
We prove that spin chains weakly coupled to a large heat bath thermalize rapidly at any temperature for finite-range, translation-invariant commuting Hamiltonians, reaching equilibrium in a time which scales logarithmically with the system size. This generalizes to the quantum regime a seminal result of Holley and Stroock from 1989 for classical spin chains and represents an exponential improvement over previous bounds based on the nonclosure of the spectral gap. We discuss the implications in the context of dissipative phase transitions and in the study of symmetry protected topological phases.
The transport quantities of a classical spin chain with quenched disorder in antiferromagnetic coupling Ji{J}_{i}Ji​ are evaluated using a dynamical simulation at finite temperatures T>0T>0T>0. Since the classical model is nonintegrable, spin and thermal conductivities remain finite even in the pure case. On the other hand, the role of disorder becomes crucial at low TTT, leading to a vanishing transport due to Anderson localization within the linearized regime. The crossover from the insulator to the conductor appears both for spin and thermal transport at quite low ${T}^{*}\ensuremath{\ll}J$. Still the many-body localization regime at T>0T>0T>0 evidenced by extremely short mean free paths can be strongly enhanced by introducing into the model an additional staggered field.
We study thermalization in a one-dimensional quantum system consisting of a noninteracting fermionic chain with each site of the chain coupled to an additional bath site. Using a density matrix renormalization group algorithm we investigate the time evolution of the observables in the chain after a quantum quench. For low densities we show that the intermediate time dynamics can be quantitatively described by a system of coupled equations of motion. For higher densities our numerical results show a prethermalization for the local observables at intermediate times and a full thermalization to the grand canonical ensemble at long times. For the case of a weak bath-chain coupling we find, in particular, a Fermi momentum distribution in the chain in equilibrium in spite of the seemingly oversimplified bath in our model.