Abstract We study heat and particle current circulation (CC) in quadratic Fermionic systems analysed using a general dissipative Lindbladian master equation. It was observed in an earlier study (Upadhyay et al 2023 Phys. Rev. E 107 034120) that CC occurs near the additional energy degeneracy point (AEDP) in Fermionic systems which have some form of asymmetry. We find general analytical expression to support this observation for quadratic Fermionic networks. We then apply these ideas to the Su–Schrieffer–Heeger (SSH) model with periodic boundary conditions and a tight binding model with unequal hopping strengths in the upper and lower branches. In both these cases, we find the specific conditions required for observing CC and study the behavior of these currents with various system parameters. We find that having unequal number of Fermionic sites in the upper and lower branches is enough for generating CC in the SSH model. However, this asymmetry is not adequate for the tight-binding model and we require unequal hopping strengths in the upper and lower branches to induce CC in this model. We also compare our results with the exact results obtained via the Non-equilibrium Green function formalism, and observe that the relationship between AEDP and CC also holds for the exact results. Finally, we observe that for certain system parameters, the onset point of particle and heat CC are not the same. Based on all these observations, we describe how carefully examining the energy spectrum of the system gives a great deal of information about the possibility and behavior of CC in Fermionic systems with asymmetries.
Abstract We study heat and particle current circulation (CC) in quadratic Fermionic systems analysed using a general dissipative Lindbladian master equation. It was observed in an earlier study (Upadhyay et al 2023 Phys. Rev. E 107 034120) that CC occurs near the additional energy degeneracy point (AEDP) in Fermionic systems which have some form of asymmetry. We find general analytical expression to support this observation for quadratic Fermionic networks. We then apply these ideas to the Su–Schrieffer–Heeger (SSH) model with periodic boundary conditions and a tight binding model with unequal hopping strengths in the upper and lower branches. In both these cases, we find the specific conditions required for observing CC and study the behavior of these currents with various system parameters. We find that having unequal number of Fermionic sites in the upper and lower branches is enough for generating CC in the SSH model. However, this asymmetry is not adequate for the tight-binding model and we require unequal hopping strengths in the upper and lower branches to induce CC in this model. We also compare our results with the exact results obtained via the Non-equilibrium Green function formalism, and observe that the relationship between AEDP and CC also holds for the exact results. Finally, we observe that for certain system parameters, the onset point of particle and heat CC are not the same. Based on all these observations, we describe how carefully examining the energy spectrum of the system gives a great deal of information about the possibility and behavior of CC in Fermionic systems with asymmetries.
Roles of fermion-fermion interactions are carefully studied in governing the low-energy fates of a two-dimensional spin-1/2 fermionic system on the kagome lattice, which features a quadratic band crossing point touched parabolically by up and down energy bands. In the framework of a renormalization group, we establish the coupled energy-dependent flows of fermionic interaction parameters by treating all kinds of fermionic interactions on the same footing and unbiasedly taking into account their one-loop corrections. Through a compressive analysis of these evolutions that carry the hierarchical information of physics, a number of outlandish behaviors are progressively decoded and addressed manifestly in the low-energy regime. At first, we find that various sorts of fermion-fermion interactions furiously compete and affect each other. With the decrease of energy scale, they are inevitably attracted by certain fixed point in the parameter space which clusters into three qualitatively distinct regions relying heavily upon structure parameters of materials. In addition, the leading instability accompanied by some symmetry breaking is attentively investigated in the proximity of different sorts of fixed points. Computing and comparing susceptibilities of twelve potential candidates indicates that charge density wave always dominates over others. Incidently, there exists several options for subleading ones including the x-current, bond density, and chiral plus s-wave superconductors. At last, we examine how physical observables behave nearby the dominant instability. Due to the strong fluctuations neighboring this instability linked to charge density wave, density of states and specific heat as well compressibility of quasiparticles are significantly suppressed, signalling the emergence of non-Fermi liquid behaviors.
Abstract We theoretically study a simple non-equilibrium quantum network whose dynamics can be expressed and exactly solved in terms of a time-local master equation. Specifically, we consider a pair of coupled fermionic modes, each one locally exchanging energy and particles with an independent, macroscopic thermal reservoir. We show that the generator of the asymptotic master equation is not additive, i.e. it cannot be expressed as a sum of contributions describing the action of each reservoir alone. Instead, we identify an additional interference term that generates coherences in the energy eigenbasis, associated with the current of conserved particles flowing in the steady state. Notably, non-additivity arises even for wide-band reservoirs coupled arbitrarily weakly to the system. Our results shed light on the non-trivial interplay between multiple thermal noise sources in modular open quantum systems.
Abstract We formulate and discuss the explicit computation of dynamic correlation functions in open quadratic fermionic systems which are driven and dissipated by Lindblad jump processes that are linear in canonical fermionic operators. Dynamic correlators are interpreted in terms of a local quantum quench where the pre-quench state is a non-equilibrium steady state, i.e. a fixed point of the Liouvillian. As an example, we study the XY spin 1/2 chain and quadratic Majorana chains with boundary Lindblad driving, whose dynamics exhibit asymmetric (skewed) light cone behaviour. We also numerically treat the two-dimensional XY model and the XY spin chain with additional Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interactions. The latter exhibits a new non-thermal phase transition which can be understood in terms of bifurcations of the quasi-particle dispersion relation. Finally, considering in some detail the periodic quadratic fermionic ring with dissipation at a single (arbitrary) site, we present analytical expressions for first order corrections (in the strength of dissipation) to the spectrum and non-equilibrium steady state (NESS) correlation functions.
We revisit the fate of the skin modes in many-body non-Hermitian fermionic systems. Contrary to the single-particle case, the many-body ground state cannot exhibit an exponential localization of all eigenstates due to the Pauli exclusion principle. However, asymmetry can still exist in the density profile, which can be quantified using the imbalance between the two halves of the system. Using the non-Hermitian Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) chain as an illustration, we show the existence of two distinct scaling regimes for the imbalance. In the first one, the imbalance grows linearly with the system size, as generically expected. In the second one, the imbalance saturates to a finite value. By combining high-precision exact diagonalization calculations and analytical arguments, we observe that the imbalance does not scale when the occupied bands can be deformed to their Hermitian limit. This suggests a direct connection between the corresponding bulk topological invariants and the skin effect in many-body systems. Importantly, this relation also holds for interacting systems.
We carefully study how the fermion-fermion interactions affect the low-energy states of a two-dimensional spin-1/2 fermionic system on the kagomé lattice with a quadratic band crossing point. With the help of the renormalization group approach, we can treat all kinds of fermionic interactions on the same footing and then establish the coupled energy-dependent flows of fermionic interaction parameters via collecting one-loop corrections, from which a number of interesting results are extracted in the low-energy regime. At first, various sorts of fermion-fermion interactions furiously compete with each other and are inevitably attracted by certain fixed point in the parameter space, which clusters into three qualitatively distinct regions relying heavily upon the structure parameters of materials. In addition, we notice that an instability accompanied by some symmetry breaking is triggered around different sorts of fixed points. Computing and comparing susceptibilities of twelve potential candidates indicates that charge density wave always dominates over all other instabilities. Incidently, there exist several subleading ones including the x-current, bond density, and chiral plus s-wave superconductors. Finally, we realize that strong fluctuations nearby the leading instability prefer to suppress density of states and specific heat as well compressibility of quasiparticles in the lowest-energy limit.
We theoretically study a simple non-equilibrium quantum network whose dynamics can be expressed and exactly solved in terms of a time-local master equation. Specifically, we consider a pair of coupled fermionic modes, each one locally exchanging energy and particles with an independent, macroscopic thermal reservoir. We show that the generator of the asymptotic master equation is not additive, i.e. it cannot be expressed as a sum of contributions describing the action of each reservoir alone. Instead, we identify an additional interference term that generates coherences in the energy eigenbasis, associated with the current of conserved particles flowing in the steady state. Notably, non-additivity arises even for wide-band reservoirs coupled arbitrarily weakly to the system. Our results shed light on the non-trivial interplay between multiple thermal noise sources in modular open quantum systems.