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We recapitulate recent developments of the functional renormalization group (FRG) approach to the steady state of systems out of thermal equilibrium. In particular, we discuss second-order truncation schemes which account for the frequency-dependence of the two particle vertex and which incorporate inelastic processes. Our focus is on two different types of one-dimensional fermion chains: (i) infinite, open systems which feature a translation symmetry, and (ii) finite systems coupled to left and right reservoirs. In addition to giving a detailed and unified review of the technical derivation of the FRG schemes, we briefly summarize some of the key physical results. In particular, we compute the non-equilibrium phase diagram and analyze the fate of the Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless transition in the infinite, open system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of quantum simulations in ultra-cold atomic gases has been remarkably successful. In principle it allows for an exact treatment of a variety of highly relevant lattice models and their emergent phases of matter. But so far there is a lack in the theoretical literature concerning the systematic study of the effects of the trap potential as well as the finite size of the systems, as numerical studies of such non periodic, correlated fermionic lattices models are numerically demanding beyond one dimension. We use the recently introduced real-space truncated unity functional renormalization group to study these boundary and trap effects with a focus on their impact on the superconducting phase of the 2D Hubbard model. We find that in the experiments not only lower temperatures need to be reached compared to current capabilities, but also system size and trap potential shape play a crucial role to simulate emergent phases of matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce a method to evaluate the steady-state non-equilibrium Keldysh–Schwinger Green's functions for infinite systems subject to both an electric field and a coupling to reservoirs. The method we present exploits a physical quasi-translation invariance, where a shift by one unit cell leaves the physics invariant if all electronic energies are simultaneously shifted by the magnitude of the electric field. Our framework is straightaway applicable to diagrammatic many-body methods. We discuss two flagship applications, mean-field theories as well as a sophisticated second-order functional renormalization group approach. The latter allows us to push the renormalization-group characterization of phase transitions for lattice fermions into the out-of-equilibrium realm. We exemplify this by studying a model of spinless fermions, which in equilibrium exhibits a Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless phase transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study finite-temperature transport properties of the one-dimensional Hubbard model using the density matrix renormalization group. Our aim is twofold: First, we compute both the charge- and the spin-current correlation function of the integrable model at half filling. The former decays rapidly, implying that the corresponding Drude weight is either zero or very small. Second, we calculate the optical charge conductivity σreg(ω) in the presence of small integrability-breaking next-nearest-neighbor interactions (the extended Hubbard model). The dc conductivity is finite and diverges as the temperature is decreased below the gap. Our results thus suggest that the half-filled, gapped Hubbard model is a normal charge conductor at finite temperatures. As a test bed for our numerics, we compute σreg(ω) for the integrable XXZ spin chain in its gapped phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study dissipation in a small quantum system coupled to an environment held in thermodynamic equilibrium. The relaxation dynamics of a system subject to an abrupt quench in the parameters of the underlying Hamiltonian is investigated using two complementary renormalization group approaches. The methods are applied to the Ohmic spin-boson model close to the coherent-to-incoherent transition. In particular, the role of non-Markovian memory for the relaxation before and after the quench of the spin-boson coupling and the Zeeman splitting of the up and down spin is investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce a real time version of the functional renormalization group, which allows us to study correlation effects on nonequilibrium transport through quantum dots. Our method is equally capable to address (i) the relaxation out of a nonequilibrium initial state into a (potentially) steady state driven by a bias voltage and (ii) the dynamics governed by an explicitly time-dependent Hamiltonian. All time regimes from transient to asymptotic can be tackled; the only approximation is the consistent truncation of the flow equations at a given order. As an application we investigate the relaxation dynamics of the interacting resonant level model, which describes a fermionic quantum dot dominated by charge fluctuations. Moreover, we study incoherence and relaxation phenomena within the ohmic spin-boson model by mapping the latter to the interacting resonant level [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider a one-dimensional interacting spinless fermion model, which displays the well-known Luttinger liquid (LL) to charge density wave (CDW) transition as a function of the ratio between the strength of the interaction U and the hopping J. We subject this system to a spatially uniform drive which is ramped up over a finite time interval and becomes time periodic in the long-time limit. We show that by using a density matrix renormalization group approach formulated for infinite system sizes, we can access the large-time limit even when the drive induces finite heating. When both the initial and long-time states are in the gapless (LL) phase, the final state has power-law correlations for all ramp speeds. However, when the initial and final state are gapped (CDW phase), we find a pseudothermal state with an effective temperature that depends on the ramp rate, both for the Magnus regime in which the drive frequency is very large compared to other scales in the system and in the opposite limit where the drive frequency is less than the gap. Remarkably, quantum defects (instantons) appear when the drive tunes the system through the quantum critical point, in a realization of the Kibble-Zurek mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the thermal conductivity of the one-dimensional Fermi-Hubbard model at a finite temperature using a density matrix renormalization group approach. The integrability of this model gives rise to ballistic thermal transport. We calculate the temperature dependence of the thermal Drude weight at half filling for various interaction strengths. The finite-frequency contributions originating from the fact that the energy current is not a conserved quantity are investigated as well. We report evidence that breaking the integrability through a nearest-neighbor interaction leads to vanishing Drude weights and diffusive energy transport. Moreover, we demonstrate that energy spreads ballistically in local quenches with initially inhomogeneous energy density profiles in the integrable case. We discuss the relevance of our results for thermalization in ultracold quantum-gas experiments and for transport measurements with quasi-one-dimensional materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the thermodynamics and transient dynamics of the (unbiased) Ohmic two-state system by exploiting the equivalence of this model to the interacting resonant level model. For the thermodynamics, we show, by using the numerical renormalization group (NRG) method, how the universal specific heat and susceptibility curves evolve with increasing dissipation strength α from those of an isolated two-level system at vanishingly small dissipation strength, with the characteristic activatedlike behavior in this limit, to those of the isotropic Kondo model in the limit α→1−. At any finite α>0, and for sufficiently low temperature, the behavior of the thermodynamics is that of a gapless renormalized Fermi liquid. Our results compare well with available Bethe ansatz calculations at rational values of α, but go beyond these, since our NRG calculations, via the interacting resonant level model, can be carried out efficiently and accurately for arbitrary dissipation strengths 0≤α<1−. We verify the dramatic renormalization of the low-energy thermodynamic scale T0 with increasing α, finding excellent agreement between NRG and density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) approaches. For the zero-temperature transient dynamics of the two-level system, P(t)=⟨σz(t)⟩, with initial-state preparation P(t≤0)=+1, we apply the time-dependent extension of the NRG (TDNRG) to the interacting resonant level model, and compare the results obtained with those from the noninteracting-blip approximation (NIBA), the functional renormalization group (FRG), and the time-dependent density matrix renormalization group (TD-DMRG). We demonstrate excellent agreement on short to intermediate time scales between TDNRG and TD-DMRG for 0≲α≲0.9 for P(t), and between TDNRG and FRG in the vicinity of α=12. Furthermore, we quantify the error in the NIBA for a range of α, finding significant errors in the latter even for 0.1≤α≤0.4. We also briefly discuss why the long-time errors in the present formulation of the TDNRG prevent an investigation of the crossover between coherent and incoherent dynamics. Our results for P(t) at short to intermediate times could act as useful benchmarks for the development of new techniques to simulate the transient dynamics of spin-boson problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]