Boundary-driven phase transitions in open two-species driven systems with an umbilic point

Different phases in open driven systems are governed by either shocks or rarefaction waves. A presence of an isolated umbilic point in bidirectional systems of interacting particles stabilizes an unusual large scale excitation, an umbilic shock (U-shock). We show that in open systems the U-shock governs a large portion of phase space, and drives a new discontinuous transition between the two rarefaction-controlled phases. This is in contrast with strictly hyperbolic case where such a transition is always continuous. Also, we describe another robust phase which takes place of the phase governed by the U-shock, if the umbilic point is not isolated.Comment: 17 pages, 6 Figs. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1206.1490; small typos in Eq (3),(5) correcte

Logarithmic divergence of the block entanglement entropy for the ferromagnetic Heisenberg model

Recent studies have shown that logarithmic divergence of entanglement entropy as function of size of a subsystem is a signature of criticality in quantum models. We demonstrate that the ground state entanglement entropy of $n$ sites for ferromagnetic Heisenberg spin-1/2 chain of the length $L$ in a sector with fixed magnetization $y$ per site grows as ${1/2}\log_{2} \frac{n(L-n)}{L}C(y)$, where $C(y)=2\pi e({1/4}-y^{2})$Comment: 4 pages, 2 fig

Infinitely dimensional Lax structure for one-dimensional Hubbard model

We report a two-parametric irreducible infinitely dimensional representation of the Lax integrability condition for the fermi Hubbard chain. Besides being of fundamental interest, hinting on possible novel quantum symmetry of the model, our construction allows for an explicit representation of an exact steady state many-body density operator for non-equilibrium boundary-driven Hubbard chain with arbitrary (asymmetric) particle source/sink rates at the letf/right end of the chain and with arbitrary boundary values of chemical potentials.Comment: 5 pages in RevTex, 1 figure, version as accepted by Phys. Rev. Let

Manipulating energy and spin currents in nonequilibrium systems of interacting qubits

We consider generic interacting chain of qubits, which are coupled at the edges to baths of fixed polarizations. We can determine the nonequilibrium steady states, described by the fixed point of the Lindblad Master Equation. Under rather general assumptions about local pumping and interactions, symmetries of the reduced density matrix are revealed. The symmetries drastically restrict the form of the steady density matrices in such a way that an exponentially large subset of one--point and many--point correlation functions are found to vanish. As an example we show how in a Heisenberg spin chain a suitable choice of the baths can completely switch off either the spin or the energy current, or both of them, despite the presence of large boundary gradients.Comment: 8 pages, 3 Figure

Obtaining pure steady states in nonequilibrium quantum systems with strong dissipative couplings

Dissipative preparation of a pure steady state usually involves a commutative action of a coherent and a dissipative dynamics on the target state. Namely, the target pure state is an eigenstate of both the coherent and dissipative parts of the dynamics. We show that working in the Zeno regime, i.e. for infinitely large dissipative coupling, one can generate a pure state by a non commutative action, in the above sense, of the coherent and dissipative dynamics. A corresponding Zeno regime pureness criterion is derived. We illustrate the approach, looking at both its theoretical and applicative aspects, in the example case of an open $XXZ$ spin-$1/2$ chain, driven out of equilibrium by boundary reservoirs targeting different spin orientations. Using our criterion, we find two families of pure nonequilibrium steady states, in the Zeno regime, and calculate the dissipative strengths effectively needed to generate steady states which are almost indistinguishable from the target pure states.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

Transition probabilities and dynamic structure factor in the ASEP conditioned on strong flux

We consider the asymmetric simple exclusion processes (ASEP) on a ring constrained to produce an atypically large flux, or an extreme activity. Using quantum free fermion techniques we find the time-dependent conditional transition probabilities and the exact dynamical structure factor under such conditioned dynamics. In the thermodynamic limit we obtain the explicit scaling form. This gives a direct proof that the dynamical exponent in the extreme current regime is $z=1$ rather than the KPZ exponent $z=3/2$ which characterizes the ASEP in the regime of typical currents. Some of our results extend to the activity in the partially asymmetric simple exclusion process, including the symmetric case.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figure

Solution of the Lindblad equation for spin helix states

Using Lindblad dynamics we study quantum spin systems with dissipative boundary dynamics that generate a stationary nonequilibrium state with a non-vanishing spin current that is locally conserved except at the boundaries. We demonstrate that with suitably chosen boundary target states one can solve the many-body Lindblad equation exactly in any dimension. As solution we obtain pure states at any finite value of the dissipation strength and any system size. They are characterized by a helical stationary magnetization profile and a superdiffusive ballistic current of order one, independent of system size even when the quantum spin system is not integrable. These results are derived in explicit form for the one-dimensional spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain and its higher-spin generalizations (which include for spin-1 the integrable Zamolodchikov-Fateev model and the bi-quadratic Heisenberg chain). The extension of the results to higher dimensions is straightforward.Comment: 23 pages, 2 figure