Open Quantum Symmetric Simple Exclusion Process

TL;DR

This paper models a quantum fermionic system with stochastic dynamics, revealing rich out-of-equilibrium quantum fluctuations and providing exact solutions for steady states and large deviation functions, bridging classical and quantum statistical mechanics.

Contribution

It introduces an exactly solvable quantum model that extends classical exclusion processes to include quantum coherences and fluctuations.

Findings

Exact steady-state distribution derived

Quantum fluctuations obey a large deviation principle

Method connects fermion technology with classical exclusion processes

Abstract

We introduce and solve a model of fermions hopping between neighbouring sites on a line with random Brownian amplitudes and open boundary conditions driving the system out of equilibrium. The average dynamics reduces to that of the symmetric simple exclusion process. However, the full distribution encodes for a richer behaviour entailing fluctuating quantum coherences which survive in the steady limit. We determine exactly the system state steady distribution. We show that these out of equilibrium quantum fluctuations fulfil a large deviation principle and we present a method to recursively compute exactly the large deviation function. On the way, our approach gives a solution of the classical symmetric simple exclusion process using fermion technology. Our results open the route towards the extension of the macroscopic fluctuation theory to many body quantum systems.