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Challenges to observation of many-body localization

Piotr Sierant and Jakub Zakrzewski
Phys. Rev. B 105, 224203 – Published 14 June 2022

Abstract

We study time dynamics of 1D disordered Heisenberg spin-1/2 chains focusing on a regime of large system sizes and a long-time evolution. This regime is relevant for observation of many-body localization (MBL), a phenomenon that is expected to freeze the dynamics of the system and prevent it from reaching thermal equilibrium. Performing extensive numerical simulations of the imbalance, a quantity often employed in the experimental studies of MBL, we show that the regime of a slow power-law decay of imbalance persists to disorder strengths exceeding by at least a factor of 2 the current estimates of the critical disorder strength for MBL. Even though we investigate time evolution up to the few thousands of tunneling times, we observe no signs of the saturation of imbalance that would suggest freezing of system dynamics and provide smoking gun evidence of MBL. We demonstrate that the situation is qualitatively different when the disorder is replaced by a quasiperiodic potential. In this case, we observe an emergence of a pattern of oscillations of the imbalance that is stable with respect to changes in the system size. This suggests that the dynamics of quasiperiodic systems remains fully local at the longest timescales we reach, provided that the quasiperiodic potential is sufficiently strong. Our study identifies challenges in an unequivocal experimental observation of the phenomenon of MBL.

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  • Received 5 October 2021
  • Revised 6 May 2022
  • Accepted 2 June 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.105.224203

©2022 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied PhysicsStatistical Physics & Thermodynamics

Authors & Affiliations

Piotr Sierant1,2 and Jakub Zakrzewski2,3,*

  • 1The Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics, Strada Costiera 11, 34151, Trieste, Italy
  • 2Institute of Theoretical Physics, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Łojasiewicza 11, 30-348 Kraków, Poland
  • 3Mark Kac Complex Systems Research Center, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, 30-348 Kraków, Poland

  • *jakub.zakrzewski@uj.edu.pl

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Issue

Vol. 105, Iss. 22 — 1 June 2022

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