Heat transport in an open transverse-field Ising chain

¹ School of Science, Hangzhou Dianzi University - Hangzhou 310018, PRC
² Center for Statistical and Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics, Zhejiang Normal University Jinhua 321004, PRC
³ Department of Physics, Zhejiang University - Hangzhou 310027, PRC

^a qhchen@zju.edu.cn

Received: 13 July 2010
Accepted: 4 October 2010

Abstract

The heat conduction in an open transverse-field Ising chain is studied by using quantization in the Fock space of operators in the weak-coupling regimes, i.e. the coupling is much smaller than the transverse field. The non-equilibrium steady state is obtained for large-size systems coupled to Markovian baths at its ends. The ballistic transport is observed in the uniform chain and normal diffusion in the random exchange chain. In addition, the ballistic-diffusive transition is found at the intermediate disorder regime. The thermal conductivity κ is also calculated in the low- and high-temperature regimes. It is shown that κ decays as κ∼T⁻² at high temperatures.