Typicality of nonequilibrium (quasi-)steady currents

Xiansong Xu, Chu Guo, Dario Poletti

Published 2021-11-25, updated 2022-02-11Version 2

The understanding of the emergence of equilibrium statistical mechanics has progressed significantly thanks to developments from typicality, canonical and dynamical, and from the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. Here we focus on a nonequilibrium scenario in which two nonintegrable systems prepared in different states are locally and non-extensively coupled to each other. Using both perturbative analysis and numerical exact simulations of up to 28 spin systems, we demonstrate the typical emergence of nonequilibrium (quasi-)steady current for weak coupling between the subsystems. We also identify that these currents originate from a prethermalization mechanism, which is the weak and local breaking of the conservation of the energy for each subsystem.