Non-equilibrium spin transport in integrable spin chains: persistent currents and emergence of magnetic domains

Abstract

We construct exact steady states of unitary non-equilibrium time evolution in the gapless XXZ spin-1/2 chain where integrability preserves ballistic spin transport at long-times. We characterize the quasi-local conserved quantities responsible for this feature and introduce a computationally effective way to evaluate their expectation values on generic matrix product initial states. We employ this approach to reproduce the long-time limit of local observables in all quantum quenches which explicitly break particle-hole or time-reversal symmetry. We focus on a class of initial states supporting persistent spin currents and our predictions remarkably agree with numerical simulations at long times. Furthermore, we propose a protocol for this model where interactions, even when antiferromagnetic, are responsible for the unbounded growth of a macroscopic magnetic domain.