Scaling behavior of the stationary states arising from dissipation at continuous quantum transitions

Abstract

We study the critical behavior of the nonequilibrium dynamics and of the steady states emerging from the competition between coherent and dissipative dynamics close to quantum phase transitions. The latter is induced by the coupling of the system with a Markovian bath, such that the evolution of the system's density matrix can be effectively described by a Lindblad master equation. We devise general scaling behaviors for the out-of-equilibrium evolution and the stationary states emerging in the large-time limit for generic initial conditions in terms of the parameters of the Hamiltonian providing the coherent driving and those associated with the dissipative interactions with the environment. Our framework is supported by numerical results for the dynamics of a one-dimensional lattice fermion gas undergoing a quantum Ising transition in the presence of dissipative mechanisms which include local pumping and decay of particles.