Quantum phase transition in a far-from-equilibrium steady state of an XY spin chain.

Using quantization in the Fock space of operators, we compute the nonequilibrium steady state in an open Heisenberg XY spin 1/2 chain of a finite but large size coupled to Markovian baths at its ends. Numerical and theoretical evidence is given for a far-from-equilibrium quantum phase transition with the spontaneous emergence of long-range order in spin-spin correlation functions, characterized by a transition from saturation to linear growth with the size of the entanglement entropy in operator space.