  We demonstrate that persistent currents can be induced in a quantum system in
contact with a structured reservoir, without the need of any applied gauge
field. The working principle of the mechanism leading to their presence is
based on the extension to the many-body scenario of non-reciprocal Lindblad
dynamics, recently put forward by Metelmann and Clerk in Phys. Rev. X 5, 021025
(2015): Non-reciprocity can be generated by suitably balancing coherent
interactions with their corresponding dissipative version, induced by the
coupling to a common structured environment, such to make total interactions
directional. Specifically, we consider an interacting spin/boson model in a
ring-shaped one-dimensional lattice coupled to an external bath. By employing a
combination of cluster mean-field, exact diagonalization and
matrix-product-operator techniques, we show that solely dissipative effects
suffice to engineer steady states with a persistent current that survives in
the limit of large systems. We also verify the robustness of such current in
the presence of additional dissipative or Hamiltonian perturbation terms.
