Kinetic Theory of Spin Diffusion and Superdiffusion in XXZ Spin Chains

We address the nature of spin transport in the integrable XXZ spin chain, focusing on the isotropic Heisenberg limit. We calculate the diffusion constant using a kinetic picture based on generalized hydrodynamics combined with Gaussian fluctuations: we find that it diverges, and show that a self-consistent treatment of this divergence gives superdiffusion, with an effective time-dependent diffusion constant that scales as D(t) similar to t(1/3). This exponent had previously been observed in large-scale numerical simulations, but had not been theoretically explained. We briefly discuss XXZ models with easy-axis anisotropy Delta > 1. Our method gives closed-form expressions for the diffusion constant D in the infinite-temperature limit for all Delta > 1. We find that D saturates at large anisotropy, and diverges as the Heisenberg limit is approached, as D similar to (Delta - 1)(-1/2).