Transport as a sensitive indicator of quantum criticality

Gernot Schaller, Malte Vogl, Tobias Brandes

Published 2014-03-29, updated 2014-04-15Version 2

We consider bosonic transport through one-dimensional spin systems. Transport is induced by coupling the spin systems to bosonic reservoirs kept at different temperatures. In the limit of weak-coupling between spins and bosons we apply the quantum-optical master equation to calculate the energy transmitted from source to drain reservoirs. At large thermal bias, we find that the current for longitudinal transport becomes independent of the chain length and is also not drastically affected by the presence of disorder. In contrast, at small temperatures, the current scales inversely with the chain length and is further suppressed in presence of disorder. We also find that the critical behaviour of the ground state is mapped to critical behaviour of the current -- even in configurations with infinite thermal bias.