Dresden 2026 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 9: Statistical Physics far from Thermal Equilibrium I

DY 9.8: Talk

Monday, March 9, 2026, 11:30–11:45, ZEU/0160

Fermionic quantum criticality far from equilibrium — •Rohan Mittal, Tom Zander, Johannes Lang, and Sebastian Diehl — Universität Zu Köln

Driving a quantum system out of equilibrium while preserving its subtle quantum mechanical correlations on large scales presents a major challenge, both fundamentally and for technological applications. At its core, this challenge is pinpointed by the question of how quantum effects can persist at asymptotic scales, analogous to quantum critical points in equilibrium. In this work, we construct such a scenario using fermions as building blocks. These fermions undergo an absorbing-to-absorbing state transition between two topologically distinct and quantum-correlated dark states. Starting from a microscopic, interacting Lindbladian, we derive an effective Lindblad-Keldysh field theory in which critical fermions couple to a bosonic bath with hydrodynamic fluctuations associated with particle number conservation. A key feature of this field theory is an emergent symmetry that protects the purity of the fermions’ state even in the presence of the thermal bath. We quantitatively characterize the critical point using a leading-order expansion around the upper critical dimension, thereby establishing the first non-equilibrium universality class of fermions. The symmetry protection mechanism, which exhibits parallels to the problem of directed percolation, suggests a pathway toward a broader class of robust, universal quantum phenomena in fermionic systems.

Keywords: Quantum criticality; Topological phase transition; Effective field theories; Renormalisation group methods