Robustness of many-body localization in the presence of dissipation
Many-body localization (MBL) has emerged as a novel paradigm for robust ergodicity breaking in closed quantum many-body systems. However, it is not yet clear to which extent MBL survives in the presence of dissipative processes induced by the coupling to an environment. Here we study heating and erg...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
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American Physical Society
2016
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/34243/ |
| _version_ | 1848794806546857984 |
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| author | Levi, Emanuele Heyl, Markus Lesanovsky, Igor Garrahan, Juan P. |
| author_facet | Levi, Emanuele Heyl, Markus Lesanovsky, Igor Garrahan, Juan P. |
| author_sort | Levi, Emanuele |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | Many-body localization (MBL) has emerged as a novel paradigm for robust ergodicity breaking in closed quantum many-body systems. However, it is not yet clear to which extent MBL survives in the presence of dissipative processes induced by the coupling to an environment. Here we study heating and ergodicity for a paradigmatic MBL system---an interacting fermionic chain subject to quenched disorder---in the presence of dephasing. We find that, even though the system is eventually driven into an infinite-temperature state, heating as monitored by the von Neumann entropy can progress logarithmically slowly, implying exponentially large time scales for relaxation. This slow loss of memory of initial conditions make signatures of non-ergodicity visible over a long, but transient, time regime. We point out a potential controlled realization of the considered setup with cold atomic gases held in optical lattices. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:22:03Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-34243 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:22:03Z |
| publishDate | 2016 |
| publisher | American Physical Society |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-342432020-05-04T17:57:14Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/34243/ Robustness of many-body localization in the presence of dissipation Levi, Emanuele Heyl, Markus Lesanovsky, Igor Garrahan, Juan P. Many-body localization (MBL) has emerged as a novel paradigm for robust ergodicity breaking in closed quantum many-body systems. However, it is not yet clear to which extent MBL survives in the presence of dissipative processes induced by the coupling to an environment. Here we study heating and ergodicity for a paradigmatic MBL system---an interacting fermionic chain subject to quenched disorder---in the presence of dephasing. We find that, even though the system is eventually driven into an infinite-temperature state, heating as monitored by the von Neumann entropy can progress logarithmically slowly, implying exponentially large time scales for relaxation. This slow loss of memory of initial conditions make signatures of non-ergodicity visible over a long, but transient, time regime. We point out a potential controlled realization of the considered setup with cold atomic gases held in optical lattices. American Physical Society 2016-06-09 Article PeerReviewed Levi, Emanuele, Heyl, Markus, Lesanovsky, Igor and Garrahan, Juan P. (2016) Robustness of many-body localization in the presence of dissipation. Physical Review Letters, 116 . 237203/1-237203/5. ISSN 1079-7114 http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.237203# doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.237203 doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.237203 |
| spellingShingle | Levi, Emanuele Heyl, Markus Lesanovsky, Igor Garrahan, Juan P. Robustness of many-body localization in the presence of dissipation |
| title | Robustness of many-body localization in the presence of dissipation |
| title_full | Robustness of many-body localization in the presence of dissipation |
| title_fullStr | Robustness of many-body localization in the presence of dissipation |
| title_full_unstemmed | Robustness of many-body localization in the presence of dissipation |
| title_short | Robustness of many-body localization in the presence of dissipation |
| title_sort | robustness of many-body localization in the presence of dissipation |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/34243/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/34243/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/34243/ |