Spin-helix states in the $XXZ$ spin chain with strong dissipation

Abstract

We investigate the nonequilibrium steady state (NESS) in an open quantum XXZ chain with strong $XY$ plane boundary polarization gradient. Using the general theory developed in [1], we show that in the critical $XXZ$ $|\Delta |<1$ easy plane case, the steady current in large systems under strong driving shows resonance-like behaviour, by an infinitesimal change of the spin chain anisotropy or other parameters. Alternatively, by fine tuning the system parameters and varying the boundary dissipation strength, we observe a change of the NESS current from diffusive (of order $1/N$, for small dissipation strength) to ballistic regime (of order 1, for large dissipation strength). This drastic change results from an accompanying structural change of the NESS, which becomes a pure spin-helix state characterized by a winding number which is proportional to the system size. We calculate the critical dissipation strength needed to observe this surprising effect.

20 pages, 12 figures

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• Winding up quantum spin helices: How avoided level crossings exile classical topological protection
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• Dissipative generation of pure steady states and a gambler's ruin problem
• Boundary driven $XYZ$ chain: Exact inhomogeneous triangular matrix product ansatz
• Invariant subspaces and explicit Bethe vectors in the integrable open spin $1/2$ $\XYZ$ chain
• Transition between dissipatively stabilized helical states
• Exact NESS of XXZ circuits boundary driven with arbitrary resets or fields
• Stabilization of Granovskii-Zhedanov scars of the XYZ quantum spin chain via non-Hermitian spin relaxation
• Switching pure states of the dissipative Heisenberg XXZ chain by local magnetic fields
• Inhomogeneous MPA and exact steady states of boundary driven spin chains at large dissipation