Casimir effect in the nonequilibrium steady-state of a quantum spin chain

Abstract

We present a fully microscopics-based calculation of the Casimir effect in a nonequilibrium system, namely an energy flux driven quantum XX chain. The force between the walls (transverse-field impurities) is calculated in a nonequilibrium steady state which is prepared by letting the system evolve from an initial state with the two halves of the chain prepared at equilibrium at different temperatures. The steady state emerging in the large-time limit is homogeneous but carries an energy flux. The Casimir force in this nonequilibrium state is calculated analytically in the limit when the transverse fields are small. We find that the the Casimir force range is reduced compared to the equilibrium case, and suggest that the reason for this is the reduction of fluctuations in the flux carrying steady state.

11 pages

References in corpus (8)

• Measurement of the Temperature Dependence of the Casimir-Polder Force
• Casimir-Lifshitz force out of thermal equilibrium
• Casimir forces between defects in one-dimensional quantum liquids
• Casimir-Lifshitz force out of thermal equilibrium and asymptotic non-additivity
• Scaling and front dynamics in Ising quantum chains
• Casimir effect in a one-dimensional gas of free fermions
• Oscillating Casimir force between impurities in one-dimensional Fermi liquids
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Cited by in corpus (2)

• Non-equilibrium steady states in the quantum XXZ spin chain
• Persistence of power-law correlations in nonequilibrium steady states of gapped quantum spin chains