Low-temperature transport in out-of-equilibrium XXZ chains

We study the low-temperature transport properties of out-of-equilibrium XXZ spin-1/2 chains. We consider the protocol where two semi-infinite chains are prepared in two thermal states at small but different temperatures and suddenly joined together. We focus on the qualitative and quantitative features of the profiles of local observables, which at large times t and distances x from the junction become functions of the ratio ζ=x/t. By means of the generalized hydrodynamic equations, we analyse the rich phenomenology arising by considering different regimes of the phase diagram. In the gapped phases, variations of the profiles are found to be exponentially small in the temperatures but described by non-trivial functions of ζ. We provide analytical formulae for the latter, which give accurate results also for small but finite temperatures. In the gapless regime, we show how the three-step conformal predictions for the profiles of energy density and energy current are naturally recovered from the hydrodynamic equations. Moreover, we also recover the recent non-linear Luttinger liquid predictions for low-temperature transport: universal peaks of width Δζ∝T emerge at the edges of the light cone in the profiles of generic observables. Such peaks are described by the same function of ζ for all local observables.