  The semi-infinite XY spin chain with an impurity at the boundary has been
chosen as a prototype of interacting many-body systems to test for non-ergodic
behavior. The model is exactly solvable in analytic way in the thermodynamic
limit, where energy eigenstates and the spectrum are obtained in closed form.
In addition of a continuous band, localized states may split off from the
continuum, for some values of the impurity parameters. In the next step, after
the preparation of an arbitrary non-equilibrium state, we observe the time
evolution of the site magnetization. Relaxation properties are described by the
long-time behavior, which is estimated using the stationary phase method.
Absence of localized states defines an ergodic region in parameter space, where
the system relaxes to a homogeneous magnetization. Out of this region, impurity
levels split from the band, and localization phenomena may lead to
non-ergodicity.

Statistical Mechanics