Exact Steady State of the Open XX-Spin Chain: Entanglement and Transport Properties

We study the reduced dynamics of open quantum spin chains of arbitrary length N with nearest-neighbor XX interactions, immersed within an external constant magnetic field along the z direction, the end spins of which are weakly coupled to heat baths at different temperatures, via energy-preserving couplings. We find the analytic expression of the unique stationary state of the master equation obtained in the so-called global approach based on the spectralization of the full-chain Hamiltonian. Hinging upon the explicit stationary state, we reveal the presence of sink and source terms in the spin-flow continuity equation and compare their behavior with that of the stationary heat flow. Moreover, we also obtain analytic expressions for the steady-state two-spin reduced density matrices and for their concurrence. We then set up an algorithm suited to compute the stationary bipartite entanglement along the chain and to study its dependence on the Hamiltonian parameters and on the bath temperatures.