Cheaper access to universal fluctuations in integrable spin chains from boundary effects

Abstract

Observing super-diffusive fluctuations from Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) universality in isotropic integrable spin chains is usually challenging as it requires a fairly large number of spins in interaction. We demonstrate in this paper, in the context of classical spins, that accounting for boundary effects lowers the bar, down to a few dozen spins in some cases. Additionally, boundaries control the relaxation to stationarity, which leads to many new universal scaling functions to explore, both in periodic spin chains and for open chains with magnetization imposed by reservoirs at the ends.