In the study of quantum transport, much has been known about dynamics near thermal equilibrium. However, quantum transport far away from equilibrium is much less well understood---the linear response approximation does not hold for physics far out of equilibrium in general. In this work, motivated by recent cold atom experiments on probing quantum many-body dynamics of a one-dimensional XXZ spin chain, where a transition from ballistic to diffusive dynamics has been established by increasing the interaction strengths, we study the strong interaction limit of the one-dimensional spinless fermion model, which is dual to the XXZ spin chain. We develop a highly efficient computation algorithm for simulating the nonequilibrium dynamics of this system exactly, and examine the nonequilibrium dynamics starting from a density modulation quantum state. We find ballistic transport in this strongly correlated setting and show that a plane-wave description emerges at long-time evolution. We also observe a sharp distinction between transport velocities in short and long times as induced by interaction effects and provide a quantitative interpretation for the long-time transport velocity. We expect our results to shed light on the understanding of the dynamics of the XXZ spin chain in the strong interaction regime.
In the study of quantum transport, much has been known about dynamics near thermal equilibrium. However, quantum transport far away from equilibrium is much less well understood---the linear response approximation does not hold for physics far out of equilibrium in general. In this work, motivated by recent cold atom experiments on probing quantum many-body dynamics of a one-dimensional XXZ spin chain, where a transition from ballistic to diffusive dynamics has been established by increasing the interaction strengths, we study the strong interaction limit of the one-dimensional spinless fermion model, which is dual to the XXZ spin chain. We develop a highly efficient computation algorithm for simulating the nonequilibrium dynamics of this system exactly, and examine the nonequilibrium dynamics starting from a density modulation quantum state. We find ballistic transport in this strongly correlated setting and show that a plane-wave description emerges at long-time evolution. We also observe a sharp distinction between transport velocities in short and long times as induced by interaction effects and provide a quantitative interpretation for the long-time transport velocity. We expect our results to shed light on the understanding of the dynamics of the XXZ spin chain in the strong interaction regime.
A variety of recent studies have shed light on the far from equilibrium behavior of quantum systems. Research suggests that this away from equilibrium approach may lead to the realization of unfamiliar dynamical quantum states. For instance, we see ballistic transport at finite temperature, an absence of thermalization, and development of long-range entanglement from initially uncorrelated states. It has been shown that in some cases a time-evolving quantum state is equivalent to the ground state of an "emergent" Hamiltonian where the time enters as a param- eter. This mapping gives us insight into the nature of correlations between particles. For high temperatures, we expect no long-range correlations to develop. However, the emergent model demonstrates that the time-evolved state can be realized as a low energy eigenstate, which naturally possesses long-range correlations. Here, we study the dynamical behavior of both noninteracting and interacting particles in a one-dimensional lattice under various conditions. As the system un- dergoes time evolution, we look at the distribution of particles as well as correlations between particles in the system. We then compare the actual time-evolving state of the system to the ground state of the emergent Hamiltonian to study how long this description is valid. We generally expect that the description is valid in a given region as long as the boundary effects do not propagate into the region. We first verify and reproduce results in the literature (see Vidmar et al. [1]). We proceed to study the effect of interaction strength in a particular interacting model that shows both ballistic and diffusive transport. We then apply this formalism to calculate infinite temperature dynamics of a noninteracting system. Interestingly, this system also develops long-range correlations over time in spite of starting out from an infinite temperature state.
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.
Quantum transport in nonequilibrium settings plays a fundamental role in understanding the properties of systems ranging from quantum devices to biological systems. Dephasing---a key aspect of out-of-equilibrium systems---arises from interactions with a noisy environment and can profoundly modify transport properties. Here we investigate the impact of dephasing on the nonequilibrium steady-state transport properties of noninteracting fermions on a one-dimensional lattice with long-range hopping (proportional to $1/{r}^{\ensuremath{\alpha}}$), where $\ensuremath{\alpha}>1$. We demonstrate the emergence of distinct transport regimes as the long-range hopping parameter, $\ensuremath{\alpha}$, is tuned. In the short-range limit ($\ensuremath{\alpha}\ensuremath{\gg}1$), transport is diffusive. Conversely, in the long-range limit $[\ensuremath{\alpha}\ensuremath{\sim}\mathcal{O}(1)]$, we observe a superdiffusive transport regime. Using numerical simulations of the Lindblad master equation and corroborating these with an analysis of the current-operator norm, we identify a critical long-range hopping parameter, ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{c}\ensuremath{\approx}1.5$, below which superdiffusive transport becomes pronounced and rapidly becomes independent of the dephasing strength. Our results elucidate the intricate balance between dephasing and unitary dynamics, revealing steady-state transport features.
Many experimentally relevant quantum spin chains are approximately integrable, and support long-lived quasiparticle excitations. A canonical example of integrable model of quantum magnetism is the XXZ spin chain, for which energy spreads ballistically, but, surprisingly, spin transport can be diffusive or superdiffusive. We review the transport properties of this model using an intuitive quasiparticle picture that relies on the recently introduced framework of generalized hydrodynamics. We discuss how anomalous linear response properties emerge from hierarchies of quasiparticles both in integrable and near-integrable limits, with an emphasis on the role of hydrodynamic fluctuations. We also comment on recent developments including non-linear response, full-counting statistics and far-from-equilibrium transport. We provide an overview of recent numerical and experimental results on transport in XXZ spin chains.
The study of collective behaviour in many-body systems often explores fundamentally new ideas absent from the mere constituents of such a system. A paradigmatic model for these studies is the spin-1/2 XXZ chain and its fermionic equivalent. This thesis can be broadly divided into the study of two fundamental aspects of this model. Firstly, we discuss localisation phenomena in one dimensional lattices as often experimentally realised in cold atom systems. Secondly, we investigate how disorder and symmetry influence heat transport in spin chains. More specifically, in the first part we consider a system of non-interacting fermions in one dimension subject to a single-particle potential consisting of a strong optical lattice, a harmonic trap, and uncorrelated on-site disorder. We investigate a global inhomogeneous quantum quench and present numerical and analytical results for static and dynamical properties. We show that the approach to the non-thermal equilibrium state is extremely slow and that it implies a sensitivity to disorder parametrically stronger than that expected from Anderson localisation. We also consider the above system in a strong non-uniform electric field. In the non-interacting case, due to Wannier-Stark localisation, the single-particle wave functions are exponentially localised without quenched disorder. We show that this system remains localised in the presence of nearest-neighbour interactions and exhibits physics analogous to models of conventional many-body localisation. The second part explores the hydrodynamics of the disordered XYZ spin chain. Using time-evolving block decimation on open chains of up to 400 spins attached to thermal baths, we probe the energy transport of this system. Our principal findings are as follows. For weak disorder there is a stable diffusive region that persists up to a critical disorder strength that depends on the XY anisotropy. Then, for disorder strengths above this critical value energy transport becomes increasingly subdiffusive.
Recent experimental advances on ultracold atomic gases and trapped ions have made it possible to simulate exactly solvable quantum systems of interacting particles. In particular, the feasibility of making rapid changes, so-called quantum quenches, to such set-ups has allowed experimentalists to probe non-equilibrium phenomena in closed interacting quantum systems. This, in turn, has spurred a considerable theoretical interest in quantum many-body systems out of equilibrium. In this thesis, we study non-equilibrium properties of quantum many-body systems in the framework of exactly solvable quantum field theory in one spatial dimension. Specific systems include interacting fermions described by the Luttinger model and effective descriptions of spin chains using conformal field theory (CFT). Special emphasis is placed on heat and charge transport, studied from the point of view of quench dynamics, and, in particular, the effects of breaking conformal symmetries on transport properties. Examples include the Luttinger model with non-local interactions, breaking Lorentz and scale invariance, and inhomogeneous CFT, which generalizes standard CFT in that the usual propagation velocity v is replaced by a function v(x) that depends smoothly on the position x, breaking translation invariance. The quench dynamics studied here is for quantum quenches between, in general, different smooth inhomogeneous systems. An example of this is the so-called smooth-profile protocol, in which the initial state is defined by, e.g., smooth inhomogeneous profiles of inverse temperature and chemical potential, and the time evolution is governed by a homogeneous Hamiltonian. Using this protocol, we compute exact analytical results for the full time evolution of the systems mentioned above. In particular, we derive finite-time results that are universal in the sense that the same relations between the non-equilibrium dynamics and the initial profiles hold for any unitary CFT. These results also make clear that heat and charge transport in standard CFT are purely ballistic. Finally, we propose and study an inhomogeneous CFT model with v(x) given by a random function. We argue that this model naturally emerges as an effective description of one-dimensional quantum many-body systems with certain static random impurities. Using tools from wave propagation in random media, we show that such impurities lead to normal and anomalous diffusive contributions to heat transport on top of the ballistic one known from standard CFT.