Role of interactions in a dissipative many-body localized system

Recent experimental and theoretical efforts have focused on the effect of dissipation on quantum many-body systems in their many-body localized (MBL) phase. While in the presence of dephasing noise such systems reach a unique ergodic state, their dynamics is characterized by slow relaxation manifest...

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Main Authors: Everest, B., Lesanovsky, Igor, Garrahan, Juan P., Levi, Emanuele
Format: Article
Published: American Physical Society 2017
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/40491/
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author Everest, B.
Lesanovsky, Igor
Garrahan, Juan P.
Levi, Emanuele
author_facet Everest, B.
Lesanovsky, Igor
Garrahan, Juan P.
Levi, Emanuele
author_sort Everest, B.
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description Recent experimental and theoretical efforts have focused on the effect of dissipation on quantum many-body systems in their many-body localized (MBL) phase. While in the presence of dephasing noise such systems reach a unique ergodic state, their dynamics is characterized by slow relaxation manifested in nonexponential decay of self-correlations. Here we shed light on a currently much debated issue, namely, the role of interactions for this relaxation dynamics. We focus on the experimentally relevant situation of the evolution from an initial charge density wave in the presence of strong dephasing noise. We find a crossover from a regime dominated by disorder to a regime dominated by interactions, with an accompanying change of time correlators from stretched exponential to compressed exponential form. The strongly interacting regime can be explained in terms of nucleation and growth dynamics of relaxing regions—reminiscent of the kinetics of crystallization in soft matter systems—and should be observable experimentally. This interaction-driven crossover suggests that the competition between interactions and noise gives rise to a much richer structure of the MBL phase than anticipated so far.
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spelling nottingham-404912020-05-04T19:59:19Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/40491/ Role of interactions in a dissipative many-body localized system Everest, B. Lesanovsky, Igor Garrahan, Juan P. Levi, Emanuele Recent experimental and theoretical efforts have focused on the effect of dissipation on quantum many-body systems in their many-body localized (MBL) phase. While in the presence of dephasing noise such systems reach a unique ergodic state, their dynamics is characterized by slow relaxation manifested in nonexponential decay of self-correlations. Here we shed light on a currently much debated issue, namely, the role of interactions for this relaxation dynamics. We focus on the experimentally relevant situation of the evolution from an initial charge density wave in the presence of strong dephasing noise. We find a crossover from a regime dominated by disorder to a regime dominated by interactions, with an accompanying change of time correlators from stretched exponential to compressed exponential form. The strongly interacting regime can be explained in terms of nucleation and growth dynamics of relaxing regions—reminiscent of the kinetics of crystallization in soft matter systems—and should be observable experimentally. This interaction-driven crossover suggests that the competition between interactions and noise gives rise to a much richer structure of the MBL phase than anticipated so far. American Physical Society 2017 Article PeerReviewed Everest, B., Lesanovsky, Igor, Garrahan, Juan P. and Levi, Emanuele (2017) Role of interactions in a dissipative many-body localized system. Physical Review B, 95 (2). 024310-1. ISSN 2469-9969 http://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.95.024310 doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.95.024310 doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.95.024310
spellingShingle Everest, B.
Lesanovsky, Igor
Garrahan, Juan P.
Levi, Emanuele
Role of interactions in a dissipative many-body localized system
title Role of interactions in a dissipative many-body localized system
title_full Role of interactions in a dissipative many-body localized system
title_fullStr Role of interactions in a dissipative many-body localized system
title_full_unstemmed Role of interactions in a dissipative many-body localized system
title_short Role of interactions in a dissipative many-body localized system
title_sort role of interactions in a dissipative many-body localized system
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/40491/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/40491/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/40491/