Summary: | The study of quantum many-body physics in Liouvillian open quantum systems
becomes increasingly important with the recent progress in experimental control
on dissipative systems and their technological exploitation . A central
question in open quantum systems concerns the fate of quantum correlations, and
the possibility of controlling them by engineering the competition between the
Hamiltonian dynamics and the coupling to a bath. Such a question is challenging
from a theoretical point of view, as numerical methods faithfully accounting
for quantum correlations are either relying on exact diagonalization, limiting
drastically the sizes that can be treated; or on approximations on the range or
strength of quantum correlations, associated to the choice of a specific Ansatz
for the density matrix. In this work we propose a new method to treat open
quantum-spin lattices, based on stochastic quantum trajectories for the
solution of the open-system dynamics. Along each trajectory, the hierarchy of
equations of motion for many-point spin-spin correlators is truncated to a
given finite order, assuming that multivariate $k$-th order cumulants vanish
for $k$ exceeding a cutoff $k_c$. This allows tracking the evolution of quantum
spin-spin correlations up to order $k_c$ for all length scales. We validate
this approach in the paradigmatic case of the phase transitions of the
dissipative 2D XYZ lattice, subject to spontaneous decay. We convincingly
assess the existence of steady-state phase transitions from paramagnetic to
ferromagnetic, and back to paramagnetic, upon increasing one of the Hamiltonian
couplings; as well as their classical Ising nature. Moreover, the approach
allows us to show the presence of significant quantum correlations in the
vicinity of the dissipative critical point, and to unveil the presence of spin
squeezing, a tight lower bound to the quantum Fisher information.
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