115 research outputs found
Heat transport in the spin chain: from ballistic to diffusive regimes and dephasing enhancement
In this work we study the heat transport in an XXZ spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain
with homogeneous magnetic field, incoherently driven out of equilibrium by
reservoirs at the boundaries. We focus on the effect of bulk dephasing
(energy-dissipative) processes in different parameter regimes of the system.
The non-equilibrium steady state of the chain is obtained by simulating its
evolution under the corresponding Lindblad master equation, using the time
evolving block decimation method. In the absence of dephasing, the heat
transport is ballistic for weak interactions, while being diffusive in the
strongly-interacting regime, as evidenced by the heat-current scaling with the
system size. When bulk dephasing takes place in the system, diffusive transport
is induced in the weakly-interacting regime, with the heat current
monotonically decreasing with the dephasing rate. In contrast, in the
strongly-interacting regime, the heat current can be significantly enhanced by
dephasing for systems of small size
Quantum Phase Transitions detected by a local probe using Time Correlations and Violations of Leggett-Garg Inequalities
In the present paper we introduce a way of identifying quantum phase
transitions of many-body systems by means of local time correlations and
Leggett-Garg inequalities. This procedure allows to experimentally determine
the quantum critical points not only of finite-order transitions but also those
of infinite order, as the Kosterlitz-Thouless transition that is not always
easy to detect with current methods. By means of simple analytical arguments
for a general spin- Hamiltonian, and matrix product simulations of
one-dimensional and anisotropic models, we argue that
finite-order quantum phase transitions can be determined by singularities of
the time correlations or their derivatives at criticality. The same features
are exhibited by corresponding Leggett-Garg functions, which noticeably
indicate violation of the Leggett-Garg inequalities for early times and all the
Hamiltonian parameters considered. In addition, we find that the infinite-order
transition of the model at the isotropic point can be revealed by the
maximal violation of the Leggett-Garg inequalities. We thus show that quantum
phase transitions can be identified by purely local measurements, and that
many-body systems constitute important candidates to observe experimentally the
violation of Leggett-Garg inequalities.Comment: Minor changes, 11 pages, 11 figures. Final version published in Phys.
Rev.
Transport enhancement from incoherent coupling between one-dimensional quantum conductors
We study the non-equilibrium transport properties of a highly anisotropic
two-dimensional lattice of spin-1/2 particles governed by a Heisenberg XXZ
Hamiltonian. The anisotropy of the lattice allows us to approximate the system
at finite temperature as an array of incoherently coupled one-dimensional
chains. We show that in the regime of strong intrachain interactions, the weak
interchain coupling considerably boosts spin transport in the driven system.
Interestingly, we show that this enhancement increases with the length of the
chains, which is related to superdiffusive spin transport. We describe the
mechanism behind this effect, compare it to a similar phenomenon in single
chains induced by dephasing, and explain why the former is much stronger
Dynamics of Entanglement and the Schmidt Gap in a Driven Light-Matter System
The ability to modify light-matter coupling in time (e.g. using external
pulses) opens up the exciting possibility of generating and probing new aspects
of quantum correlations in many-body light-matter systems. Here we study the
impact of such a pulsed coupling on the light-matter entanglement in the Dicke
model as well as the respective subsystem quantum dynamics. Our dynamical
many-body analysis exploits the natural partition between the radiation and
matter degrees of freedom, allowing us to explore time-dependent
intra-subsystem quantum correlations by means of squeezing parameters, and the
inter-subsystem Schmidt gap for different pulse duration (i.e. ramping
velocity) regimes -- from the near adiabatic to the sudden quench limits. Our
results reveal that both types of quantities indicate the emergence of the
superradiant phase when crossing the quantum critical point. In addition, at
the end of the pulse light and matter remain entangled even though they become
uncoupled, which could be exploited to generate entangled states in
non-interacting systems.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, Accepted for publication in Journal of Physics
B, special issue Correlations in light-matter interaction
Beyond mean-field bistability in driven-dissipative lattices: bunching-antibunching transition and quantum simulation
In the present work we investigate the existence of multiple nonequilibrium
steady states in a coherently driven XY lattice of dissipative two-level
systems. A commonly used mean-field ansatz, in which spatial correlations are
neglected, predicts a bistable behavior with a sharp shift between low- and
high-density states. In contrast one-dimensional matrix product methods reveal
these effects to be artifacts of the mean-field approach, with both
disappearing once correlations are taken fully into account. Instead, a
bunching-antibunching transition emerges. This indicates that alternative
approaches should be considered for higher spatial dimensions, where classical
simulations are currently infeasible. Thus we propose a circuit QED quantum
simulator implementable with current technology to enable an experimental
investigation of the model considered
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