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Critical Behavior near the Many-Body Localization Transition in Driven Open Systems
Zala Lenarčič1, Ori Alberton2, Achim Rosch2
1Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
Physical Review Letters
|September 25, 2020
Summary
Researchers found that coupling quantum systems to specific baths reveals many-body localization (MBL) phase transitions. This method allows studying MBL critical points in open systems, overcoming limitations of previous studies.
Area of Science:
- Quantum physics
- Condensed matter physics
Background:
- Coupling many-body localized systems to thermal baths disrupts localization signatures.
- Nonthermal baths or weak driving can lead to nonthermal stationary values in local conserved quantities.
Purpose of the Study:
- To demonstrate how nonthermal stationary values can be used to study the many-body localization (MBL) phase transition in weakly open systems.
- To investigate the role of bath coupling strength as analogous to temperature in T=0 quantum phase transitions.
Main Methods:
- Investigating the MBL phase transition by tuning the coupling strength to nonthermal baths.
- Applying numerical methods to study the MBL critical point.
- Utilizing matrix-product operator solution to the Lindblad equation for a scalable numerical scheme.
Main Results:
- The coupling strength to nonthermal baths acts like temperature, enabling the study of MBL transitions.
- Key MBL transition features, such as dynamical exponent divergence and critical disorder strength, were detected.
- A scalable numerical approach using matrix-product operators was proposed for studying the MBL critical point.
Conclusions:
- Weakly open systems with nonthermal baths offer a viable platform for studying MBL phase transitions.
- The proposed numerical method overcomes limitations of traditional exact diagonalization studies.
- This research opens new avenues for exploring quantum phase transitions in open quantum systems.
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