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Entropy

Contrast Analysis on Spin Transport of Multi-Periodic Exotic States in the XXZ Chain

Shixian Jiang, Jianpeng Liu, Yongqiang Li

Published Oct 15, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum spin transport in integrable systems reveals a rich nonequilibrium phenomena that challenges the conventional hydrodynamic framework. Recent advances in ultracold atom experiments with state preparation and single-site addressing have enabled the understanding of this anomalous behavior. Particularly, the full universality characterization of exotic initial states, as well as their measurement representation, remain unknown. By employing tensor network and contrast methods, we systematically investigate spin transport in the quantum XXZ spin chain and extract dynamical scaling exponents emerging from two paradigmatic and experimentally attainable initial states, i.e., multi-periodic domain-wall (MPDW) and spin-helix (SH) states. Our results using different values of anisotropic parameters Δ∈[0,1.2] demonstrate the evident impeded transport and the difference between the two states with increasing Δ values. Large-scale and consistent simulations confirm the contrast method as a viable scaling extraction approach for exotic states with periodicity within experimentally accessible timescales. Our work establishes a foundation for studying initial memory and the corresponding relations of emergent transport behavior in nonequilibrium quantum systems, opening avenues for the identification of their unique universality classes.

DOI
10.3390/e27101070

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Quantum spin transport in integrable systems reveals a rich nonequilibrium phenomena that challenges the conventional hydrodynamic framework. Recent advances in ultracold atom experiments with state preparation and single-site addressing have enabled the understanding of this anomalous behavior. Particularly, the full universality characterization of exotic initial states, as well as their measurement representation, remain unknown. By employing tensor network and contrast methods, we systematically investigate spin transport in the quantum XXZ spin chain and extract dynamical scaling exponents emerging from two paradigmatic and experimentally attainable initial states, i.e., multi-periodic domain-wall (MPDW) and spin-helix (SH) states. Our results using different values of anisotropic parameters Δ∈[0,1.2] demonstrate the evident impeded transport and the difference between the two states with increasing Δ values. Large-scale and consistent simulations confirm the contrast method as a viable scaling extraction approach for exotic states with periodicity within experimentally accessible timescales. Our work establishes a foundation for studying initial memory and the corresponding relations of emergent transport behavior in nonequilibrium quantum systems, opening avenues for the identification of their unique universality classes.
Abstract Understanding universal behavior of far-from-equilibrium transport dynamics at a quantum many-body level is a longstanding challenge. A full characterization of universal dynamics of nonlocal correlation functions still remains largely unknown. In this letter, we uncover universal scaling laws of higher-order cumulants in one-dimensional isotropic Heisenberg model, revealing anomalous behaviors of nonequilibrium dynamics exclusively accessible in higher-order correlation functions. Using numerical simulations and full counting statistics, we determine the power laws of both the spin polarization transfer and contrast cumulants for different kinds of helix and domain-wall initial states. Building on such physical states, we unify the scaling behavior of the higher-order cumulants as two types of dynamics: anomalous diffusive and superdiffusive. For the former, these higher cumulants show a deviation from Gaussian statistics, with the scaling exponents being identical for the first four orders. For the latter, however, we observe a breakdown of KPZ universality, with the exponents of the third and fourth orders differing significantly from those of the first two. Our results are also agreeable with recent experimental observations, advancing understanding of far-from-equilibrium transport phenomena.
Anomalous transport in low dimensional spin chains is an intriguing topic that can offer key insights into the interplay of integrability and symmetry in many-body dynamics. Recent studies have shown that spin-spin correlations in spin chains, where integrability is either perfectly preserved or broken by symmetry-preserving interactions, fall in the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) universality class. Similarly, energy transport can show ballistic or diffusive-like behavior. Although such behavior has been studied under equilibrium conditions, no results on nonequilibrium spin transport in classical spin chains has been reported so far. In this work, we investigate both spin and energy transport in classical spin chains (integrable and nonintegrable) when coupled to two reservoirs at two different temperatures/magnetizations. In both the integrable case and the broken-integrability (but spin-symmetry preserving) case, we report anomalous scaling of spin current with system size (J^{s}∝L^{-μ}), with an exponent value that, within error bars, is close to the KPZ universality class value μ≈2/3. On the other hand, it is noteworthy that the energy current remains ballistic (J^{e}∝L^{-η} with η≈0) in the purely integrable case while there is departure from ballistic behavior (η>0) when integrability is broken regardless of spin-symmetry. We also present results on other interesting observables in the nonequilibrium steady state such as the spatial profiles of magnetization and energy, and spin-spin correlations.
Generalized hydrodynamics predicts universal ballistic transport in integrable lattice systems when prepared in generic inhomogeneous initial states. However, the ballistic contribution to transport can vanish in systems with additional discrete symmetries. Here we perform large scale numerical simulations of spin dynamics in the anisotropic Heisenberg XXZ spin 1/2 chain starting from an inhomogeneous mixed initial state which is symmetric with respect to a combination of spin reversal and spatial reflection. In the isotropic and easy-axis regimes we find non-ballistic spin transport which we analyse in detail in terms of scaling exponents of the transported magnetization and scaling profiles of the spin density. While in the easy-axis regime we find accurate evidence of normal diffusion, the spin transport in the isotropic case is clearly super-diffusive, with the scaling exponent very close to 2/3, but with universal scaling dynamics which obeys the diffusion equation in nonlinearly scaled time.
State-of-the-art approaches to extract transport coefficients of many-body quantum systems broadly fall into two categories: (i) they target the linear-response regime in terms of equilibrium correlation functions of the closed system; or (ii) they consider an open-system situation typically modeled by a Lindblad equation, where a nonequilibrium steady state emerges from driving the system at its boundaries. While quantitative agreement between (i) and (ii) has been found for selected model and parameter choices, also disagreement has been pointed out in the literature. Studying magnetization transport in the spin-1/21/21/2 XXZ chain, we here demonstrate that at weak driving, the nonequilibrium steady state in an open system, including its buildup in time, can remarkably be constructed just on the basis of correlation functions in the closed system. We numerically illustrate this direct correspondence of closed-system and open-system dynamics, and show that it allows the treatment of comparatively large open systems, usually only accessible to matrix product state simulations. We also point out potential pitfalls when extracting transport coefficients from nonequilibrium steady states in finite systems.
Isotropic integrable spin chains such as the Heisenberg model feature superdiffusive spin transport belonging to an as-yet-unidentified dynamical universality class closely related to that of Kardar, Parisi, and Zhang (KPZ). To determine whether these results extend to more generic one-dimensional models, particularly those realizable in quantum simulators, we investigate spin and energy transport in non-integrable, long-range Heisenberg models using state-of-the-art tensor network methods. Despite the lack of integrability and the asymptotic expectation of diffusion, for power-law models (with exponent 2<α<∞2 < α< \infty2<α<∞) we observe long-lived z=3/2z=3/2z=3/2 superdiffusive spin transport and two-point correlators consistent with KPZ scaling functions, up to times t∼103/Jt \sim 10^3/Jt∼103/J. We conjecture that this KPZ-like transport is due to the proximity of such power-law-interacting models to the integrable family of Inozemtsev models, which we show to also exhibit KPZ-like spin transport across all interaction ranges. Finally, we consider anisotropic spin models naturally realized in Rydberg atom arrays and ultracold polar molecules, demonstrating that a wide range of long-lived, non-diffusive transport can be observed in experimental settings.
Understanding the transport properties of quantum many-body systems is a central challenge in condensed matter and statistical physics. Theoretical studies usually rely on two main approaches: Dynamics of linear-response functions in closed systems and boundary-driven dynamics governed by Markovian master equations for open systems. While the equivalence of their dynamical behavior has been explored in recent studies, a systematic comparison of the transport coefficients obtained from these two classes of approaches remains a largely open question. Here, we address this gap by comparing and contrasting the dc diffusion constant Ddc\mathcal{D}_{\text{dc}}Ddc​ according to the two approaches, focusing on the specific example of magnetization transport in the spin-1/21/21/2 XXZ chain. Using exact numerical simulations for finite system sizes, we find (i) a clear mismatch between the two Ddc\mathcal{D}_{\text{dc}}Ddc​ and (ii) a strong dependence of Ddc\mathcal{D}_{\text{dc}}Ddc​ on the system-bath coupling strength for the open system, where neither (i) nor (ii) tend to vanish in the thermodynamic limit. These findings suggest limitations of the open-system approach to transport coefficients. To gain insight into the origin of (i) and (ii), we go beyond Ddc\mathcal{D}_{\text{dc}}Ddc​ and analyze the full time dependence of the diffusion coefficient D(t)D(t)D(t) in the open system. In this way, we find that both (i) and (ii) vanish up to a finite time scale. While this time scale gradually increases with system size and tends to be macroscopic in the thermodynamic limit, this increase is still slow compared to the increase of the time to reach the steady state, where (i) and (ii) do not vanish. This observation can be seen as a wrong, yet unavoidable order of limits of long times first and large system sizes afterwards.