Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

Journal of Physics Condensed Matter

Quenching dissipative quantum Ising chain: an exact result for nonequilibrium dynamics

Xin Li, You-Yang Xu, Shun‐Cai Zhao

Published Mar 8, 2019• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

To create a more comprehensive understanding of nonequilibrium dynamics of open quantum many-body systems, we visit an exactly solvable example, that is a quenched transverse-field Ising chain coupled to Markovian baths, which act locally on the Jordan-Wigner fermionic space. Performing explicit calculations on the heat transfer, transverse magnetization, and kink density, we find that the imbalance of two opposite damping mechanisms play a crucial role in constructing a nontrivial nonequilibrium steady state accompanied with a dissipative quantum phase transition, also that the competition between unitary drive and decoherence does not necessarily lead to a quasi-stationary state or prethermalization under certain ordinary relaxation.

DOI
10.1088/1361-648x/ab0e47

Related papers

Dissipation Mechanisms and Dissipative Phase Transitions of two coupled Fully Connected Quantum Ising models

Bidyut Dey, Andrea Kazemi Nava, Domenico Giuliano

We study dissipative phase transitions in a system of two coupled fully-connected quantum Ising models interacting with an environment. The dynamics is governed by a Lindblad master equation combining coherent unitary evolution and incoherent dissipative processes, where the unitary part is described within a self-consistent mean-field framework effectively acting on the local Hilbert space of two coupled spins at each site. We analyze two fundamentally different classes of dissipators. In the first case, the jump operators are defined in the instantaneous eigenbasis of the mean-field Hamiltonian and satisfy a detailed-balance condition. In this setting, the relaxation dynamics depends strongly on the quench protocol: a parametric quench of the Hamiltonian leads to conventional relaxation, whereas a temperature quench gives rise to a dynamical phase transition characterized by nonanalytic behavior in time. Yet, in both cases, the system relaxes toward a steady state determined solely by the post-quench parameters and the bath temperature, which closely resembles a thermal Gibbs state of the mean-field Hamiltonian. As a result, the dissipative phase transition occurs at a critical point consistent with the corresponding equilibrium transition. In contrast, when the dissipators are realized via local spin raising and lowering operators, the steady state is genuinely nonequilibrium, leading to a significantly richer phase diagram. In particular, for sufficiently strong system-bath coupling, we observe a reentrant phase featuring a symmetry-broken region bounded by two continuous dissipative phase transitions. Our results evidence how the structure of dissipative processes controls the emergence of equilibrium-like versus genuinely nonequilibrium critical behavior in open quantum systems.

arXiv:2604.27072•Apr 29, 2026•0 citations

Solvable Family of Driven-Dissipative Many-Body Systems

Michael Foss‐Feig, Jeremy T. Young, Victor V. Albert +2 more

Exactly solvable models have played an important role in establishing the sophisticated modern understanding of equilibrium many-body physics. Conversely, the relative scarcity of solutions for nonequilibrium models greatly limits our understanding of systems away from thermal equilibrium. We study a family of nonequilibrium models, some of which can be viewed as dissipative analogues of the transverse-field Ising model, in that an effectively classical Hamiltonian is frustrated by dissipative processes that drive the system toward states that do not commute with the Hamiltonian. Surprisingly, a broad and experimentally relevant subset of these models can be solved efficiently. We leverage these solutions to compute the effects of decoherence on a canonical trapped-ion-based quantum computation architecture, and to prove a no-go theorem on steady-state phase transitions in a many-body model that can be realized naturally with Rydberg atoms or trapped ions.

arXiv:1703.04626•Physical Review Letters•Nov 6, 2017•59 citations

Decoherence in the quantum Ising model with transverse dissipative interaction in the strong-coupling regime

Hannes Weisbrich, C. Saussol, Wolfgang Belzig +1 more

We study the decoherence dynamics of a quantum Ising lattice of finite size with a transverse dissipative interaction, namely, the coupling with the bath is assumed perpendicular to the direction of the spins interaction and parallel to the external magnetic field. In the limit of small transverse field, the eigenstates and spectrum are obtained by a strong-coupling expansion, from which we derive the Lindblad equation in the Markovian limit. At temperature lower than the energy gap and for weak dissipation, the decoherence dynamics can be restricted to take only the two degenerate ground states and the first excited subspace into account. The latter is formed by pairs of topological excitations (domain walls or kinks), which are quantum delocalized along the chain due to the small magnetic field. We find that some of these excited states form a relaxation-free subspace, namely, they do not decay to the ground states.

arXiv:1804.07559•Physical Review A•Nov 7, 2018•12 citations

Relaxation, prethermalization, and diffusion in a noisy quantum Ising chain

Jamir Marino, Alessandro Silva

We study the dynamics of thermalization resulting from a time-dependent noise in a quantum Ising chain subject to a sudden quench of the transverse magnetic field. For weak noise the dynamics shows a prethermalized state at intermediate time scales, eventually drifting towards an asymptotic infinite temperature steady state characterized by diffusive behavior. By computing analytically the density of kinks, as well as the transverse and longitudinal magnetic field correlators, we characterize these two regimes, their observability, and their signatures in the various physical quantities.

arXiv:1203.2108•Physical Review B•Aug 22, 2012•85 citations

Dynamic phase transitions of a driven Ising chain in a dissipative cavity

Xi-Wang Luo, Yuna Zhang, Xingxiang Zhou +2 more

We study the nonequilibrium quantum phase transition of an Ising chain in a dissipative cavity driven by an external transverse light field. When driving and dissipation are in balance, the system can reach a nonequilibrium steady state which undergoes a superradiant phase transition as the driving strength increases. Interestingly, the superradiant field changes the effective bias of the Ising chain in return and drives its own transition between the ferromagnetic and the paramagnetic phase. We study the rich physics in this system with sophisticated behavior and investigate important issues in its dynamics such as the stability of the system and criticality of the phase transition.

arXiv:1609.02465•Physical Review A•Nov 7, 2016•8 citations

Nonequilibrium dynamics of arbitrary-range Ising models with decoherence: An exact analytic solution

Michael Foss‐Feig, Kaden R. A. Hazzard, J. J. Bollinger +1 more

The interplay between interactions and decoherence in many-body systems is of fundamental importance in quantum physics. In a step toward understanding this interplay, we obtain an exact analytic solution for the nonequilibrium dynamics of Ising models with arbitrary couplings (and therefore in arbitrary dimension) and subject to local Markovian decoherence. Our solution shows that decoherence significantly degrades the nonclassical correlations developed during coherent Ising spin dynamics, which relax much faster than predicted by treating decoherence and interactions separately. We also show that the competition of decoherence and interactions induces a transition from oscillatory to overdamped dynamics that is absent at the single-particle or mean-field level. These calculations are applicable to ongoing quantum information and emulation efforts using a variety of atomic, molecular, optical, and solid-state systems. In particular, we apply our results to the NIST Penning trapped-ion experiment and show that the current experiment is capable of producing entanglement amongst hundreds of quantum spins.

arXiv:1209.5795•Physical Review A•Apr 3, 2013•85 citations
To create a more comprehensive understanding of nonequilibrium dynamics of open quantum many-body systems, we visit an exactly solvable example, that is a quenched transverse-field Ising chain coupled to Markovian baths, which act locally on the Jordan-Wigner fermionic space. Performing explicit calculations on the heat transfer, transverse magnetization, and kink density, we find that the imbalance of two opposite damping mechanisms play a crucial role in constructing a nontrivial nonequilibrium steady state accompanied with a dissipative quantum phase transition, also that the competition between unitary drive and decoherence does not necessarily lead to a quasi-stationary state or prethermalization under certain ordinary relaxation.
We study dissipative phase transitions in a system of two coupled fully-connected quantum Ising models interacting with an environment. The dynamics is governed by a Lindblad master equation combining coherent unitary evolution and incoherent dissipative processes, where the unitary part is described within a self-consistent mean-field framework effectively acting on the local Hilbert space of two coupled spins at each site. We analyze two fundamentally different classes of dissipators. In the first case, the jump operators are defined in the instantaneous eigenbasis of the mean-field Hamiltonian and satisfy a detailed-balance condition. In this setting, the relaxation dynamics depends strongly on the quench protocol: a parametric quench of the Hamiltonian leads to conventional relaxation, whereas a temperature quench gives rise to a dynamical phase transition characterized by nonanalytic behavior in time. Yet, in both cases, the system relaxes toward a steady state determined solely by the post-quench parameters and the bath temperature, which closely resembles a thermal Gibbs state of the mean-field Hamiltonian. As a result, the dissipative phase transition occurs at a critical point consistent with the corresponding equilibrium transition. In contrast, when the dissipators are realized via local spin raising and lowering operators, the steady state is genuinely nonequilibrium, leading to a significantly richer phase diagram. In particular, for sufficiently strong system-bath coupling, we observe a reentrant phase featuring a symmetry-broken region bounded by two continuous dissipative phase transitions. Our results evidence how the structure of dissipative processes controls the emergence of equilibrium-like versus genuinely nonequilibrium critical behavior in open quantum systems.
Exactly solvable models have played an important role in establishing the sophisticated modern understanding of equilibrium many-body physics. Conversely, the relative scarcity of solutions for nonequilibrium models greatly limits our understanding of systems away from thermal equilibrium. We study a family of nonequilibrium models, some of which can be viewed as dissipative analogues of the transverse-field Ising model, in that an effectively classical Hamiltonian is frustrated by dissipative processes that drive the system toward states that do not commute with the Hamiltonian. Surprisingly, a broad and experimentally relevant subset of these models can be solved efficiently. We leverage these solutions to compute the effects of decoherence on a canonical trapped-ion-based quantum computation architecture, and to prove a no-go theorem on steady-state phase transitions in a many-body model that can be realized naturally with Rydberg atoms or trapped ions.
We study the decoherence dynamics of a quantum Ising lattice of finite size with a transverse dissipative interaction, namely, the coupling with the bath is assumed perpendicular to the direction of the spins interaction and parallel to the external magnetic field. In the limit of small transverse field, the eigenstates and spectrum are obtained by a strong-coupling expansion, from which we derive the Lindblad equation in the Markovian limit. At temperature lower than the energy gap and for weak dissipation, the decoherence dynamics can be restricted to take only the two degenerate ground states and the first excited subspace into account. The latter is formed by pairs of topological excitations (domain walls or kinks), which are quantum delocalized along the chain due to the small magnetic field. We find that some of these excited states form a relaxation-free subspace, namely, they do not decay to the ground states.
We study the dynamics of thermalization resulting from a time-dependent noise in a quantum Ising chain subject to a sudden quench of the transverse magnetic field. For weak noise the dynamics shows a prethermalized state at intermediate time scales, eventually drifting towards an asymptotic infinite temperature steady state characterized by diffusive behavior. By computing analytically the density of kinks, as well as the transverse and longitudinal magnetic field correlators, we characterize these two regimes, their observability, and their signatures in the various physical quantities.
We study the nonequilibrium quantum phase transition of an Ising chain in a dissipative cavity driven by an external transverse light field. When driving and dissipation are in balance, the system can reach a nonequilibrium steady state which undergoes a superradiant phase transition as the driving strength increases. Interestingly, the superradiant field changes the effective bias of the Ising chain in return and drives its own transition between the ferromagnetic and the paramagnetic phase. We study the rich physics in this system with sophisticated behavior and investigate important issues in its dynamics such as the stability of the system and criticality of the phase transition.
The interplay between interactions and decoherence in many-body systems is of fundamental importance in quantum physics. In a step toward understanding this interplay, we obtain an exact analytic solution for the nonequilibrium dynamics of Ising models with arbitrary couplings (and therefore in arbitrary dimension) and subject to local Markovian decoherence. Our solution shows that decoherence significantly degrades the nonclassical correlations developed during coherent Ising spin dynamics, which relax much faster than predicted by treating decoherence and interactions separately. We also show that the competition of decoherence and interactions induces a transition from oscillatory to overdamped dynamics that is absent at the single-particle or mean-field level. These calculations are applicable to ongoing quantum information and emulation efforts using a variety of atomic, molecular, optical, and solid-state systems. In particular, we apply our results to the NIST Penning trapped-ion experiment and show that the current experiment is capable of producing entanglement amongst hundreds of quantum spins.