In spite of being the subject of intense research, several key but complex questions on the nonequilibrium physics of correlated quantum systems remain controversial. For example, the nature of particle and energy transport in different interacting regimes, the relevance of integrability and the impact of environmental coupling are still under active debate. These problems can now be approached numerically, due to the development of powerful algorithms which allow the efficient simulation of the dynamics of correlated systems. In the present thesis we study numerically and analytically the transport properties of low-dimensional quantum systems. In particular, we consider the steady-state spin and energy conduction through XXZ boundary-driven spin-1/2 chains. In the first part, we analyse the transport through chains with only coherent processes in the bulk. For spin transport induced by a magnetisation imbalance between the boundaries, previously identified ballistic, diffusive and negative differential conductivity regimes are reproduced. We provide a comprehensive explanation of the latter. The energy conduction induced by this driving scheme features the same properties as spin transport. For thermally-driven chains, we discuss the nature of energy transport and the emergence of local thermal states when the integrability of the Hamiltonian is broken. In the second part of the thesis we analyse the effect of bulk incoherent effects on the transport properties previously discussed. First we find that for weak particle-particle interactions, pure dephasing degrades spin and energy conduction. In contrast, for strong interactions dephasing induces a significant transport enhancement. We identify the underlying mechanism and discuss its generality. Finally, motivated by the lattice structure of several organic conductors, we study the interplay between coherent and incoherent processes in systems of weakly-coupled chains. We find an enhancement effect due to incoherent interchain hopping, stronger than that by dephasing, which increases with the chain length and relates to superdiffusive transport.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:669827 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Mendoza Arenas, Juan JoseĢ |
| Contributors | Jaksch, Dieter |
| Publisher | University of Oxford |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:44b89c4d-e9eb-4136-a540-c80bcabeb6f6 |
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