Strong-to-weak spontaneous symmetry breaking (SW-SSB) is a distinctive phenomenon of mixed quantum states, characterized by nonlinear long-range order associated with strong symmetry. In realistic open quantum systems, however, strong symmetry is macroscopically fragile and can be explicitly reduced to weak symmetry through local charge exchange with the environment. In this paper, we investigate how the SW-SSB order decays under such strong-symmetry-breaking Liouvillian dynamics. For discrete
Z2 symmetry, a local symmetry-breaking perturbation drives an exponential decay of the Rényi-1 long-range correlator, revealing the fragility of discrete SW-SSB order. By contrast, for continuous
U(1) symmetry, local charge exchange broadens the distribution over symmetry-charge sectors and leads to parametrically slower algebraic relaxation. We establish a rigorous algebraic lower bound on the connected Rényi-1 long-range correlation, demonstrating the robustness of this slow relaxation. In the thermodynamic limit, we further uncover a two-stage dynamical scaling:
R~1∼t−1 at early times and
R~1∼t−1/z at long times, with
z set by the underlying hydrodynamic dynamics. As a numerical verification, we consider fermionic chains with
z=2 and
z=4, which are excellent agreement with the theoretical predictions.
Based on the study of a one-dimensional (1D) antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on a comb lattice, this work identifies an example of spontaneous continuous symmetry breaking in a 1D system with short-range interactions. When a symmetry-preserving relevant perturbation is applied to the system, we find that this model can always be described by the Marshall-Lieb-Mattis (MLM) theorem. The Shen-Qiu-Tian theorem establishes a direct connection between the MLM theorem (in the case of bipartite lattices with unequal numbers of sites in the two sublattices) and the breaking of continuous symmetry. Moreover, although authors of previous studies have suggested that the presence of a tower of states (TOS) serves as an important numerical diagnostic of the tendency of a system toward spontaneous symmetry breaking, these investigations have primarily focused on two-dimensional systems. In 1D systems, however, the presence of long-range order does not automatically imply the emergence of a TOS. Here, we observe the existence of a TOS in a 1D realistic ferrimagnetic lattice system with short-range interactions.
Strong-to-weak spontaneous symmetry breaking (SWSSB) defines a mixed-state phase of matter--without a pure-state counterpart--in which nonlinear observables such as the Rényi-2 correlator develop long-range order while conventional linear correlations remain short-ranged. Here we study the emergence of SWSSB in one-dimensional open quantum systems governed by Lindbladian evolution, where the transition time diverges with system size and SWSSB appears only asymptotically in the steady state. By tracking the late-time growth of the Rényi-2 correlation length, we uncover a universal dynamical regime controlled purely by the symmetry class of the Lindbladian. Contrary to the conventional expectation that late-time dynamics are governed by the low-lying Liouvillian spectrum, we find that the time dependence of the SWSSB transition--exponential versus algebraic--is dictated solely by symmetry, independent of details of the Lindbladian, including whether the Liouvillian spectrum is gapped or gapless. For
Z2-symmetric dynamics, the Rényi-2 correlation length grows exponentially in time--even when the spectrum is gapless--yielding an effective transition time
tc∝lnL and enabling rapid preparation of the
Z2 SWSSB steady state. In contrast, U(1)-symmetric dynamics exhibit algebraic scaling,
tc∝Lα, with a filling-dependent dynamical exponent: ballistic growth (
α≈1) at finite filling crosses over to diffusive scaling (
α=2) in the zero-filling limit. These results establish symmetry--rather than spectral gap structure--as the controlling principle for SWSSB late-time dynamical scaling, and open a new route to nonequilibrium symmetry breaking in open quantum systems.
We propose a realization of tunable long-range mediated interactions generated by Nambu-Goldstone (NG) modes near spontaneous symmetry breaking. An effective exchange interaction emerges between two distinguishable impurities proportional to the retarded susceptibility mediated by the bath particles. The interaction is mediated by emergent NG modes associated with symmetry breaking in systems, namely the magnon mode in a repulsive two-component Fermi or Bose gas, or the goldstino mode in a Bose-Fermi mixture. When the NG mode is gapped by explicit symmetry breaking, the interaction has a Yukawa-type short-ranged interaction, whereas the gapless limit gives a Coulomb law. Above the NG mode threshold, the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya-like cross product coupling emerges in a long-range form. Our proposal paves a way towards the realization of a quantum simulator of spin models and polarons with controllable non-local interactions.