Non-Equilibrium Phase Transition in a Boundary-Driven Dissipative Fermionic Chain

TL;DR

This paper shows that boundary-localized periodic driving can induce long-range correlations in a dissipative fermionic chain, revealing a non-equilibrium phase transition driven by a resonance mechanism bridging energy gaps.

Contribution

It demonstrates how boundary-driven Floquet protocols can generate macroscopic order in open quantum systems even when the bulk is trivial.

Findings

Boundary drive induces long-range correlations via resonance.

Long-range order scales as the square of the pairing potential.

Non-equilibrium transition occurs even in trivial gapped phases.

Abstract

We demonstrate that a boundary-localized periodic (Floquet) drive can induce nontrivial long-range correlations in a non-interacting fermionic chain which is additionally subject to boundary dissipation. Surprisingly, we find that this phenomenon occurs even when the corresponding isolated bulk is in a trivial gapped phase with exponentially decaying correlations. We argue that this boundary-drive induced non-equilibrium transition (as witnessed through the correlation matrix) is driven by a resonance mechanism whereby the drive frequency bridges bulk energy gaps, allowing boundary-injected particles and holes to propagate and mediate long-range correlations into the bulk. We also numerically establish that when the drive bridges a particle-hole gap, the induced long-range order scales as a power law with the bulk pairing potential ($\chi \sim \gamma^2$). Our results highlight the potential of localized coherent driving for generating macroscopic order in open quantum systems.