  I propose an archtitecture for the realization of dissipative quantum
many-body spin models. The dissipative processes are mediated by interactions
with auxiliary particles and lead to a widely tunable class of correlated
quantum jump operators. These findings enable the investigation of purely
dissipative spin models, where coherent dynamics is entirely absent. I provide
a detailed review of a recently introduced variational method to analyze such
dissipative quantum many-body systems, and I discuss a specific example in
terms of a purely dissipative Heisenberg model, for which I find an additional
disordered phase that is not present in the corresponding ground state phase
diagram.
