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Many-body localization in imperfectly isolated quantum systems
Sonika Johri1, Rahul Nandkishore2, R N Bhatt1,3
1Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA.
Physical Review Letters
|April 4, 2015
Summary
Many-body localization signatures vanish with environmental coupling. New diagnostics using spectral functions robustly detect localization even in imperfectly isolated systems.
Area of Science:
- Quantum physics
- Condensed matter theory
- Statistical mechanics
Background:
- Many-body localization (MBL) describes the failure of a quantum system to thermalize.
- Understanding MBL in realistic, non-isolated settings is crucial for experimental verification.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the survival of many-body localization signatures when a system is coupled to a thermalizing environment.
- To identify robust diagnostics for MBL in imperfectly isolated quantum systems.
Main Methods:
- Numerical exact diagonalization was employed to study the quantum system.
- Analysis focused on spectral functions of local operators and system-environment coupling.
Main Results:
- Standard MBL diagnostics fail above a critical, exponentially small environmental coupling.
- Alternative diagnostics based on spectral functions (discrete spectrum, energy gaps) remain robust.
- These robust signatures persist for couplings weaker than system energy scales.
Conclusions:
- Many-body localization signatures are fragile to environmental coupling, with standard diagnostics failing easily.
- Spectral functions offer a robust method for detecting MBL in realistic, weakly coupled quantum systems.
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