Transport in boundary-driven quantum spin systems: One-way street for the energy current

TL;DR

This paper investigates boundary-driven quantum spin chains, revealing a one-way street phenomenon where energy current remains unchanged under boundary inversion, and provides a symmetry-based framework for understanding quantum transport.

Contribution

It introduces a symmetry-based approach to analyze transport in quantum spin chains, demonstrating the one-way street phenomenon for energy currents in boundary-driven systems.

Findings

Energy current remains unchanged when boundary conditions are inverted.

The approach applies to XXZ and XXX Heisenberg models.

Steady state uniqueness is proven for all cases studied.

Abstract

We study transport properties in boundary-driven asymmetric quantum spin chains given by $\mathit{XXZ}$ and $\mathit{XXX}$ Heisenberg models. Our approach exploits symmetry transformations in the Lindblad master equation associated to the dynamics of the systems. We describe the mathematical steps to build the unitary transformations related to the symmetry properties. For general target polarizations, we show the occurrence of the one-way street phenomenon for the energy current, namely, the energy current does not change in magnitude and direction as we invert the baths at the boundaries. We also analyze the spin current in some situations, and we prove the uniqueness of the steady state for all investigated cases. Our results, involving nontrivial properties of the energy flow, shall interest researchers working on the control and manipulation of quantum transport.