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arXiv:1703.02934 · Quantum

A nonequilibrium quantum phase transition in strongly coupled spin chains

Eduardo Mascarenhas, Giacomo Giudice, Vincenzo Savona

Published Dec 20, 2017• 11 citations
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Abstract

We study spin transport in a boundary driven XXZ spin chain. Driving at the chain boundaries is modeled by two additional spin chains prepared in oppositely polarized states. Emergent behavior, both in the transient dynamics and in the long-time quasi-steady state, is demonstrated. Time-dependent matrix-product-state simulations of the system-bath state show ballistic spin transport below the Heisenberg isotropic point. Indications of exponentially vanishing transport are found above the Heisenberg point for low energy initial states while the current decays asymptotically as a power law for high energy states. Precisely at the critical point, non-ballistic transport is observed. Finally, it is found that the sensitivity of the quasi-stationary state on the initial state of the chain is a good witness of the different transport phases.

DOI
10.22331/q-2017-12-20-40

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We study spin transport in a boundary driven XXZ spin chain. Driving at the chain boundaries is modeled by two additional spin chains prepared in oppositely polarized states. Emergent behavior, both in the transient dynamics and in the long-time quasi-steady state, is demonstrated. Time-dependent matrix-product-state simulations of the system-bath state show ballistic spin transport below the Heisenberg isotropic point. Indications of exponentially vanishing transport are found above the Heisenberg point for low energy initial states while the current decays asymptotically as a power law for high energy states. Precisely at the critical point, non-ballistic transport is observed. Finally, it is found that the sensitivity of the quasi-stationary state on the initial state of the chain is a good witness of the different transport phases.
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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.
We calculate a nonequilibrium steady state of a quantum XX chain in the presence of dephasing and driving due to baths at chain ends. The obtained state is exact in the limit of weak driving while the expressions for one- and two-point correlations are exact for an arbitrary driving strength. In the steady state the magnetization profile and the spin current display diffusive behavior. The spin–spin correlation function, on the other hand, has long-range correlations which, though, decay to zero in either the thermodynamical limit or for equilibrium driving. At zero dephasing a nonequilibrium phase transition occurs from a ballistic transport having short-range correlations to a diffusive transport with long-range correlations.
We consider an open Heisenberg quantum spin chain, coupled at the ends to boundary reservoirs polarized in different directions, which sets up a twisting gradient across the chain. We derive a matrix product ansatz for the non-equilibrium density matrix. For the isotropic chain we calculate the exact magnetization profiles and magnetization currents in the nonequilibrium steady steady state of a chain with NNN sites. The magnetization profiles are harmonic functions with a frequency proportional to the twisting angle θ\thetaθ. The currents of the magnetization components lying in the twisting plane and in the orthogonal direction behave qualitatively differently: In-plane steady state currents scale as 1/N21/N^{2}1/N2 for fixed and sufficiently large boundary coupling, and vanish as the coupling increases, while the transversal current increases with the coupling and saturates to 2θ/N2\theta/N2θ/N.
We investigate an open XXZ spin 1/2 chain driven out of equilibrium by coupling with boundary reservoirs targeting different spin orientations in the XY-plane. Symmetries of the model are revealed which appear to be different for spin chains of odd and even sizes. As a result, the spin current is found to alternate with chain length, ruling out the possibility of ballistic transport. Heat transport is switched off completely by virtue of another global symmetry. Further, we investigate the model numerically and analytically. At strong coupling, we find an exact nonequilibrium steady state using perturbation theory. The state is determined by solving secular conditions which guarantee self-consistency of the perturbative expansion. We find nontrivial dependence of the magnetization current on the spin chain anisotropy Δ in the critical region |Δ| < 1, and a phenomenon of tripling of the twisting angle along the chain for narrow lacunae of Δ.