Dissipative Generation of Currents by Nonreciprocal Local and Global Environments

Abstract: We investigate the mechanisms necessary for the stabilization of complex quantum correlations by exploring dissipative couplings to nonreciprocal reservoirs. We analyze the role of locality in the coupling to the environment of the quantum system of interest, as we consider either local couplings throughout the system, or a single global coupling. We contrast the results obtained for two scenarios in which a chain of strongly interacting hardcore bosonic atoms is coupled directly to Markovian kinetic dissipative processes, or experiences effective dissipation through the mediation of the field of a lossy optical cavity. To investigate the dissipative dynamics of the many-body quantum systems considered we perform numerical simulations employing matrix product states numerical methods. We show that by coupling atomic tunneling terms to the global field of a dissipative cavity we can stabilize at long times both finite currents and current-current correlations throughout the atomic chain. This is in contrast to the setup in which dissipation acts directly via local tunneling processes, where currents arise in a small portion of the system and the current-current correlations are rapidly decaying.