We study the interplay between strong correlations and Markovian dephasing, resulting from monitoring the charge or spin degrees of freedom of a quantum dot described by a dissipative Anderson impurity model. Using the auxiliary master equation approach, we compute the steady-state spectral function and occupation of the dot and discuss the role of dephasing on Kondo physics. Furthermore, we consider a two-lead setup that allows to compute the steady-state current and conductance. We show that the Kondo steady state is robust to moderate charge dephasing but not to spin dephasing, which we interpret in terms of dephasing-induced heating of low-energy excitations. Finally, we show universal scaling collapse of the nonlinear conductance with a dephasing-dependent Kondo scale.
We propose a mixed-configuration approximation based on single-band impurity solvers to efficiently study nonequilibrium multiorbital systems at moderate computational cost. In this work, we merge the approach with the so-called auxiliary master equation approach. As a benchmark, we first show that our approach reproduces the results of quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) for two-orbital impurity models at equilibrium with overall good accuracy, especially for nondegenerate orbitals. We then use our approach as an impurity solver for dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) to address the case of a two-orbital, realistic layered structure, recovering the strong crystal-field-driven charge polarization observed by solving the DMFT self-consistent cycle with QMC, albeit slightly reduced. Finally, we address a prototype nonequilibrium setup by sandwiching this layer between metallic contacts subject to a bias voltage described by different chemical potentials. This simplified model demonstrates our method's potential to access nonequilibrium steady-state behavior of multiorbital, realistic materials. These findings provide a first-step basis for theoretical studies of nonequilibrium properties of multiorbital compounds directly in the real frequency domain.
We present a functional interpolation approach within the auxiliary master equation framework to efficiently and accurately solve correlated impurity problems in nonequilibrium dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT). By leveraging a near-exact auxiliary bath representation, the method estimates corrections via interpolation over a few bath realizations, significantly reducing computational cost and increasing accuracy. We illustrate the approach on the Anderson impurity model and on the Hubbard model within DMFT, capturing equilibrium and long-lived photodoped states.
We introduce a method based on auxiliary master equation for solving the problem of an impurity with local electron-electron and electron-phonon interaction embedded between two conduction leads with a finite bias voltage. The Anderson-Holstein Hamiltonian is transformed to a corresponding Lindblad equation with a reduced set of sites providing an optimal approximation of the hybridization function. The problem is solved in the superfermion representation using configuration interaction for fermions and bosons. The phonon basis is shifted and rotated with the intention of permitting a low phonon basis cutoff even in the strong-coupling regime. We benchmark this approach with the numerical renormalization group in equilibrium, finding excellent agreement. We observe, however, that the rotation brings no advantage beyond the bare shift. This is even more apparent out of equilibrium, where issues in convergence with respect to the size of the phononic Hilbert space occur only in the rotated basis. As an application of the method, we explore the evolution of the phononic peak in the differential conductance spectra with changing phonon frequency.
A description of long-lived photodoped states in Mott insulators is challenging, as it needs to address exponentially separated timescales. We demonstrate how properties of such states can be computed using numerically exact steady state techniques, in particular, the quantum Monte Carlo algorithm, by using a time-local ansatz for the distribution function with separate Fermi functions for the electron and hole quasiparticles. The simulations show that the Mott gap remains robust to large photodoping, and the photodoped state has hole and electron quasiparticles with strongly renormalized properties.
We characterize the current-carrying nonequilibrium steady state (NESS) in a single-band Hubbard model confronted with a static electric field in the presence of quenched disorder. Beyond the linear response regime, the electric field amplitude must compensate for at least half of the band gap to have a non-negligible stationary current. As the disorder is not expected to dissipate the extra energy injected by the field, optical phonons assisted by a fermionic heat bath serve as dissipation channels for the current-induced Joule heat generated by the accelerated electrons. The NESS of the system is addressed employing the dynamical mean-field theory using the so-called auxiliary master equation approach as impurity solver. Disorder effects are treated locally via the coherent potential approximation (CPA) and the self-consistent Born (SCB) approach. In the regime in which the two schemes yield similar results, we employ the SCB as it is computationally cheaper than the CPA. We show that, in a purely electronic setup, the disorder-induced dephasing cannot contribute states within the gap but only smear out the edges of the Hubbard bands. When phonons are taken into account, the different nature of disorder-induced dephasing and phonon-related dissipation becomes clear. We show that although both disorder and electron-phonon interaction enhance the current at off-resonant fields, disorder effects play a marginal role since they cannot provide in-gap states which are instead brought about by phonons and represent the privileged relaxation pathway for excited electrons.
We investigate the photocurrent and spectral features in a simplified model of a Mott photovoltaic system consisting of a multilayered insulating heterostructure. The central correlated region is coupled to two metallic leads kept at different chemical potentials. A periodic drive applied to the correlated region produces excited doublons and holons across the Mott gap which are then separated by a potential gradient, which mimics the polarization-induced electric field present in oxyde heterostructures. The nonequilibrium Floquet steady-state is addressed by means of dynamical mean-field theory and its Floquet extension, while the so-called auxiliary master equation approach is employed as impurity solver. We find that impact ionization, identified by a kink in the photocurrent as function of the driving frequency, becomes significant and is generally favoured by weak, narrow-band hybridizations to the leads beyond a certain strength of the driving field. On the other hand, in the case of a direct coupling to metallic leads with a flat band, we observe a drastic reduction of impact ionization and of the photocurrent itself.
We present a solver for correlated impurity problems out of equilibrium based on a combination of the so-called auxiliary master equation approach (AMEA) and the configuration interaction expansion. Within AMEA one maps the original impurity model onto an auxiliary open quantum system with a restricted number of bath sites which can be addressed by numerical many-body approaches such as Lanczos/Arnoldi exact diagonalization (ED) or matrix product states (MPS). While the mapping becomes exponentially more accurate with increasing number of bath sites, ED implementations are severely limited due to the fast increase of the Hilbert space dimension for open systems, and the MPS solver typically requires rather long runtimes. Here, we propose to adopt a configuration interaction approach augmented by active space extension to solve numerically the correlated auxiliary open quantum system. This allows access to a larger number of bath sites at lower computational costs than for plain ED. We benchmark the approach with numerical renormalization group results in equilibrium and with MPS out of equilibrium. In particular, we evaluate the current, the conductance, as well as the Kondo peak and its splitting as a function of increasing bias voltage below the Kondo temperature TK. We obtain a rather accurate scaling of the conductance as a function of the bias voltage and temperature rescaled by TK for moderate to strong interactions in a wide range of parameters. The approach combines the fast runtime of ED with an accuracy close to the one achieved by MPS making it an attractive solver for nonequilibrium dynamical mean field theory.
We characterize the response of a Mott insulating system to a static electric field in terms of its conducting and spectral properties. Dissipation is included by a coupling to fermionic baths and to either optical or acoustic phonons. This paper extends and completes the analysis made in a previous work by the authors [arXiv:2207.01921]. In the present work phonons are included diagrammatically within the Migdal approximation by also including self-consistency from the electronic feedback. The nonequilibrium steady-state is addressed by means of the dynamical mean-field theory based on the nonequilibrium Green's function approach, while the so-called auxiliary master equation approach is employed as impurity solver. With optical phonons the self-consistency suppresses the steady-state current at the onset of the metallic phase with respect to the nonself-consistent case. This is due to the interaction of phonons with the hot electrons of the lattice which increases their temperature, thus providing a less effective relaxation channel for the current-induced Joule heat. In addition, in the case of optical phonons the results are essentially independent of the temperature of the fermionic baths, as the latter is sensibly smaller than their characteristic frequency. On the other hand, with acoustic phonons the steady-state current is slightly suppressed by the self-consistent treatment only at field strengths close to half of the gap, away from the metallic phase, and especially at very small phonon frequency. Also, in this case the results seem to slightly depend on the temperature of the fermionic baths.
We use the self-consistent Hartree-Fock approximation for numerically addressing the integer quantum Hall effect (IQHE) regime in terms of many-body physics at higher Landau levels (LLs). We investigate the dependence of many-particle interactions on the lateral size of the electron system. We use the exchange enhancement of the g-factor for spin-polarized Landau levels as an indicator for the strength of the exchange interaction. The driving force for the g-factor enhancement is a Hund's rule behavior for the occupation of spin-split Landau levels that lowers the many-particle ground state energy by arranging as many spins in parallel as possible. By increasing the total number of electrons and total number of available states per LL, it can therefore be expected that the exchange-enhanced spin gap should increase as well. In contrast to the dependence on the magnetic field, an increase of the total number of states by simply increasing the system size at constant magnetic field shows a clear saturation behavior above a lateral system size of 1000 nm. The importance of this result is underlined by an extended introduction, which demonstrates the permanent dominance of many-body interactions in all transport regimes of the IQHE. A modeling of IQHE systems therefore has to include many-body interactions, and our results open a pathway towards many-body modeling of quantum Hall systems of macroscopic size.