• Letter

Propagation of many-body localization in an Anderson insulator

Pietro Brighi, Alexios A. Michailidis, Dmitry A. Abanin, and Maksym Serbyn
Phys. Rev. B 105, L220203 – Published 27 June 2022

Abstract

Many-body localization (MBL) is an example of a dynamical phase of matter that avoids thermalization. While the MBL phase is robust to weak local perturbations, the fate of an MBL system coupled to a thermalizing quantum system that represents a “heat bath” is an open question that is actively investigated theoretically and experimentally. In this work, we consider the stability of an Anderson insulator with a finite density of particles interacting with a single mobile impurity—a small quantum bath. We give perturbative arguments that support the stability of localization in the strong interaction regime. Large-scale tensor network simulations of dynamics are employed to corroborate the presence of the localized phase and give quantitative predictions in the thermodynamic limit. We develop a phenomenological description of the dynamics in the strong interaction regime, and we demonstrate that the impurity effectively turns the Anderson insulator into an MBL phase, giving rise to nontrivial entanglement dynamics well captured by our phenomenology.

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  • Received 25 November 2021
  • Revised 25 March 2022
  • Accepted 3 June 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.105.L220203

©2022 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied PhysicsStatistical Physics & ThermodynamicsQuantum Information, Science & TechnologyAtomic, Molecular & Optical

Authors & Affiliations

Pietro Brighi1, Alexios A. Michailidis1, Dmitry A. Abanin2, and Maksym Serbyn1

  • 1IST Austria, Am Campus 1, 3400 Klosterneuburg, Austria
  • 2Department of Theoretical Physics, University of Geneva, 24 quai Ernest-Ansermet, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland

See Also

Localization of a mobile impurity interacting with an Anderson insulator

Pietro Brighi, Alexios A. Michailidis, Kristina Kirova, Dmitry A. Abanin, and Maksym Serbyn
Phys. Rev. B 105, 224208 (2022)

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Issue

Vol. 105, Iss. 22 — 1 June 2022

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