The many-body localized (MBL) phase is characterized by a complete set of quasilocal integrals of motion and area-law entanglement of excited eigenstates. We study the effect of non-Abelian ...continuous symmetries on MBL, considering the case of SU(2) symmetric disordered spin chains. The SU(2) symmetry imposes strong constraints on the entanglement structure of the eigenstates, precluding conventional MBL. We construct a fixed-point Hamiltonian, which realizes a nonergodic (but non-MBL) phase characterized by eigenstates having logarithmic scaling of entanglement with the system size, as well as an incomplete set of quasilocal integrals of motion. We study the response of such a phase to local symmetric perturbations, finding that even weak perturbations induce multispin resonances. We conclude that the nonergodic phase is generally unstable and that SU(2) symmetry implies thermalization. The approach introduced in this Rapid Communication can be used to study dynamics in disordered systems with non-Abelian symmetries, and provides a starting point for searching nonergodic phases beyond conventional MBL.
Electron edge states in graphene in the quantum Hall effect regime can carry both charge and spin. We show that spin splitting of the zeroth Landau level gives rise to counterpropagating modes with ...opposite spin polarization. These chiral spin modes lead to a rich variety of spin current states, depending on the spin-flip rate. A method to control the latter locally is proposed. We estimate Zeeman spin splitting enhanced by exchange, and obtain a spin gap of a few hundred Kelvin.
We report on magnetotransport studies of dual-gated, Bernal-stacked trilayer graphene (TLG) encapsulated in boron nitride crystals. We observe a quantum Hall effect staircase which indicates a ...complete lifting of the 12-fold degeneracy of the zeroth Landau level. As a function of perpendicular electric field, our data exhibit a sequence of phase transitions between all integer quantum Hall states in the filling factor interval -8<ν<0. We develop a theoretical model and argue that, in contrast to monolayer and bilayer graphene, the observed Landau level splittings and quantum Hall phase transitions can be understood within a single-particle picture, but imply the presence of a charge density imbalance between the inner and outer layers of TLG, even at charge neutrality and zero transverse electric field. Our results indicate the importance of a previously unaccounted band structure parameter which, together with a more accurate estimate of the other tight-binding parameters, results in a significantly improved determination of the electronic and Landau level structure of TLG.
The Loschmidt echo, defined as the overlap between quantum wave function evolved with different Hamiltonians, quantifies the sensitivity of quantum dynamics to perturbations and is often used as a ...probe of quantum chaos. In this work we consider the behavior of the Loschmidt echo in the many-body localized phase, which is characterized by emergent local integrals of motion and provides a generic example of nonergodic dynamics. We demonstrate that the fluctuations of the Loschmidt echo decay as a power law in time in the many-body localized phase, in contrast to the exponential decay in few-body ergodic systems. We consider the spin-echo generalization of the Loschmidt echo and argue that the corresponding correlation function saturates to a finite value in localized systems. Slow, power-law decay of fluctuations of such spin-echo-type overlap is related to the operator spreading and is present only in the many-body localized phase, but not in a noninteracting Anderson insulator. While most of the previously considered probes of dephasing dynamics could be understood by approximating physical spin operators with local integrals of motion, the Loschmidt echo and its generalizations crucially depend on the full expansion of the physical operators via local integrals of motion operators, as well as operators which flip local integrals of motion. Hence these probes allow one to get insights into the relation between physical operators and local integrals of motion and access the operator spreading in the many-body localized phase.
We report on the unusual nature of the nu=0 state in the integer quantum Hall effect (QHE) in graphene and show that electron transport in this regime is dominated by counterpropagating edge states. ...Such states, intrinsic to massless Dirac quasiparticles, manifest themselves in a large longitudinal resistivity rho(xx) > or approximately h/e(2), in striking contrast to rho(xx) behavior in the standard QHE. The nu=0 state in graphene is also predicted to exhibit pronounced fluctuations in rho(xy) and rho(xx) and a smeared zero Hall plateau in sigma(xy), in agreement with experiment. The existence of gapless edge states puts stringent constraints on possible theoretical models of the nu=0 state.
We explore the dynamics and the steady state of a driven quantum spin coupled to a bath of fermions, which can be realized with a strongly imbalanced mixture of ultracold atoms using currently ...available experimental tools. Radio-frequency driving can be used to induce tunneling between the spin states. The Rabi oscillations are modified due to the coupling of the quantum spin to the environment, which causes frequency renormalization and damping. The spin-bath coupling can be widely tuned by adjusting the scattering length through a Feshbach resonance. When the scattering potential creates a bound state, by tuning the driving frequency it is possible to populate either the ground state, in which the bound state is filled, or a metastable state in which the bound state is empty. In the latter case, we predict an emergent inversion of the steady-state magnetization. Our work shows that different regimes of dissipative dynamics can be explored with a quantum spin coupled to a bath of ultracold fermions.
An artificial neural network (ANN) with the restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM) architecture was recently proposed as a versatile variational quantum many-body wave function. In this work we provide ...physical insights into the performance of this ansatz. We uncover the connection between the structure of the RBM and perturbation series, which explains the excellent precision achieved by the RBM ansatz in certain simple models, demonstrated in G. Carleo and M. Troyer Science 355, 602 (2017). Based on this relation, we improve the numerical algorithm to achieve a better performance of the RBM in cases where local minima complicate the convergence to the global one. Furthermore, we study the performance of a sparse RBM for approximating ground states of random, translationally invariant models in one dimension, as well as random matrix-product states. We find that the error in approximating such states exhibits a broad distribution and shows a positive correlation with the entanglement properties of the targeted state.
The notion of Thouless energy plays a central role in the theory of Anderson localization. We investigate and compare the scaling of Thouless energy across the many-body localization (MBL) transition ...in a Floquet model. We use a combination of methods that are reliable on the ergodic side of the transition (e.g., spectral form factor) and methods that work on the MBL side (e.g., typical matrix elements of local operators) to obtain a complete picture of the Thouless energy behavior across the transition. On the ergodic side, Thouless energy decreases slowly with the system size, while at the transition it becomes comparable to the level spacing. Different probes yield consistent estimates of Thouless energy in their overlapping regime of applicability, giving the location of the transition point nearly free of finite-size drift. This work establishes a connection between different definitions of Thouless energy in a many-body setting and yields insights into the MBL transition in Floquet systems.
Motivated by the recent experiments that reported signatures of many-body localization of ultracold atoms in optical lattices M. Schreiber et al., Science 349, 842 (2015), we study dynamics of highly ...excited states in the strongly disordered Hubbard model in one dimension. Owing to the S U ( 2 ) spin symmetry, spin degrees of freedom form a delocalized thermal bath with a narrow bandwidth. The spin bath mediates slow particle transport, eventually leading to delocalization of particles. The particle hopping rate is exponentially small in t / W ( t , W being hopping and disorder scales) owing to the narrow bandwidth of the spin bath. We find the optimal length scale for particle hopping and show that the particle transport rate depends strongly on the density of singly occupied sites in the initial state. The delocalization rate is zero for initial states with only doubly occupied or empty sites, suggesting that such states are truly many-body localized, and therefore the Hubbard model may host both localized and delocalized states. Full many-body localization can be induced by breaking spin rotational symmetry.
Time-periodic (Floquet) driving is a powerful way to control the dynamics of complex systems, which can be used to induce a plethora of new physical phenomena. However, when applied to many-body ...systems, Floquet driving can also cause heating, and lead to a featureless infinite-temperature state, hindering most useful applications. It is therefore important to find mechanisms to suppress such effects. Floquet prethermalization refers to the phenomenon where many-body systems subject to a high-frequency periodic drive avoid heating for very long times, instead tending to transient states that can host interesting physics. Its key signature is a strong parametric suppression of the heating rate as a function of the driving frequency. Here, we review our present understanding of this phenomenon in both quantum and classical systems, and across various models and methods. In particular, we present rigorous theorems underpinning Floquet prethermalization in quantum spin and fermionic lattice systems and extensions to systems with degrees of freedom that have unbounded local dimension. Further, we briefly describe applications to novel nonequilibrium phases of matter, and recent experiments probing prethermalization with quantum simulators. We close by describing the frontiers of Floquet prethermalization beyond strictly time-periodic drives, including time-quasiperiodic driving and long-lived quasi-conserved quantities enabled by large separation of energy scales.
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