Many-body dynamical localization and thermalization
Christine Khripkov, Amichay Vardi, Doron Cohen
备注：
15 pages, 10 figures, elaborated version, extra paragraph. This work is dedicated to Shmuel Fishman who passed away on 2-April-2019. Publication date (Phys. Rev. A) is 2-April-2020
We show that a quantum dynamical localization effect can be observed in a generic thermalization process of two weakly-coupled chaotic subsystems. Specifically, our model consists of the minimal experimentally relevant subsystems that exhibit chaos, which are 3-site Bose-Hubbard units. Due to the high dimensionality of the composite 6-site system, the quantum localization effect is weak and can not be resolved merely by the breakdown of quantum-to-classical correspondence. Instead, we adopt an intrinsic definition of localization as the memory of initial conditions, that is not related to the underlying classical dynamics. We discuss the dynamics in the chaotic sea, and in the vicinity of the mobility edge, beyond which ergodization is suppressed.
We numerically simulate an oscillating Bose-Einstein condensate in a disordered trap [Phys. Rev. A 82, 033603 (2010)] and the results are in good agreement with the experiment. It allows us to verify that total energy and particle number are conserved in this quantum system. The disorder acts as a medium, which results in a relaxation from nonequilibrium to equilibrium, i.e., thermalization. An algebraic localization is realized when the system approaches the equilibrium, and if the system falls into the regime when the healing length of the condensate exceeds the correlation length of the dis…
We introduce a semiclassical theory for strong localization that may arise in the context of many-body thermalization. As a minimal model for thermalization we consider a few-site Bose-Hubbard model consisting of two weakly interacting subsystems that can exchange particles. The occupation of a subsystem ($x$) satisfies in the classical treatment a Fokker-Planck equation with a diffusion coefficient $D(x)$. We demonstrate that it is possible to deduce from the classical description a quantum breaktime $t^*$, and hence the manifestations of a strong localization effect. For this purpose it is e…
Quantum many-body scar states are exceptional finite energy density eigenstates in an otherwise thermalizing system that do not satisfy the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. We investigate the fate of exact many-body scar states under perturbations. At small system sizes, deformed scar states described by perturbation theory survive. However, we argue for their eventual thermalization in the thermodynamic limit from the finite-size scaling of the off-diagonal matrix elements. Nevertheless, we show numerically and analytically that the nonthermal properties of the scars survive for a parame…
The last decade has witnessed the remarkable progress in our understanding of thermalization in isolated quantum systems. Combining the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis with quantum measurement theory, we extend the framework of quantum thermalization to open many-body systems. A generic many-body system subject to continuous observation is shown to thermalize at a single trajectory level. We show that the nonunitary nature of quantum measurement causes several unique thermalization mechanisms that are unseen in isolated systems. We present numerical evidence for our findings by applying o…
The dynamics of a many-body system can take many forms, from a purely reversible evolution to fast thermalization. Here we show experimentally and numerically that an assembly of spin 1 atoms all in the same spatial mode allows one to explore this wide variety of behaviors. When the system can be described by a Bogoliubov analysis, the relevant energy spectrum is linear and leads to undamped oscillations of many-body observables. Outside this regime, the non-linearity of the spectrum leads to irreversibity, characterized by a universal behavior. When the integrability of the Hamiltonian is bro…
Thermalizing quantum systems are conventionally described by statistical mechanics at equilibrium. However, not all systems fall into this category, with many body localization providing a generic mechanism for thermalization to fail in strongly disordered systems. Many-body localized (MBL) systems remain perfect insulators at non-zero temperature, which do not thermalize and therefore cannot be described using statistical mechanics. In this Colloquium we review recent theoretical and experimental advances in studies of MBL systems, focusing on the new perspective provided by entanglement and …
Novel cluster spin model with interactions and disorder is introduced and studied. In specific type of interactions, we find an extensive number of local integrals of motion (LIOMs), which are a modified version of the stabilizers in quantum information, i.e., mutually commuting operators specifying all quantum states in the system. These LIOMs can be defined for any strength of the interactions and disorder, and are of compact-support instead of exponentially-decaying tail. Hence, even under the presence of interactions, integrability is held, and all energy eigenstates are labeled by these L…
We analyze the dynamics of an initially trapped cloud of interacting quantum particles on a lattice under a linear (Stark) potential. We reveal a dichotomy: initially trapped interacting systems possess features typical of both many-body-localized and self-thermalizing systems. We consider both fermions ($t$-$V$ model) and bosons (Bose-Hubbard model). For the zero and infinite interaction limits, both systems are integrable: we provide analytic solutions in terms of the moments of the initial cloud shape, and clarify how the recurrent dynamics (many-body Bloch oscillations) depends on the init…
We study the prethermalization and thermalization dynamics of local observables in weakly perturbed nonintegrable systems, with Hamiltonians of the form $\hat{H}_0+g\hat{V}$, where $\hat{H}_0$ is nonintegrable and $g\hat{V}$ is a perturbation. We explore the dynamics of far from equilibrium initial states in the thermodynamic limit using a numerical linked cluster expansion (NLCE), and in finite systems with periodic boundaries using exact diagonalization. We argue that generic observables exhibit a two-step relaxation process, with a fast prethermal dynamics followed by a slow thermalizing on…
Dynamical localization is the analog of Anderson localization in momentum space, where the system's energy saturates and the single-particle wave-functions are exponentially localized in momentum space. In the presence of interactions, in the context of a periodically kicked Bose gas, it has been argued that dynamical localization persists. Focusing on the Tonks (strongly interacting) regime, we show that the many-body dynamically localized phase is effectively thermal, a clear deviation from the breaking of ergodicity observed in standard many-body localized systems. We relate the effective t…
Comment on "Quenches in quantum many-body systems: One-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model reexamined" [arXiv:0810.3720]
在最近的一篇论文中，Roux [Phys. Rev. A 79，021608（R）（2009），arXiv：0810.3720]认为玻色-哈伯德系统中的热化在猝灭之后，遵循初始态和最终哈密顿量的本征态之间重叠的近似玻尔兹曼分布。我们在这里表明，重叠的分布一般不相关的正则（或微正则）分布，因此，它不能解释为什么热化发生在量子系统。
Thermalization in many-body systems can be inhibited by the application of a linearly increasing potential, which is known as Stark many-body localization. Here we investigate the fate of this phenomenon on a two-dimensional disorder-free lattice with up to $24 \times 6$ sites. Similar to the one-dimensional case, "density-polarized" regions can act as bottlenecks for transport and thermalization on laboratory timescales. However, compared to the one-dimensional case, a substantially stronger potential gradient is needed to prevent thermalization when an extra spatial dimension is involved. Th…
Quantum many-body scar (QMBS) and quantum integrability(QI) have been recognized as two distinct mechanisms for the breakdown of eigenstate thermalization hypothesis(ETH) in an isolated system. In this work, we reveal a smooth route to connect these two ETH-breaking mechanisms in the Ising chain with transverse and longitudinal fields. Specifically, starting from an initial Ising anti-ferromagnetic state, we find that the dynamical system undergoes a smooth non-thermal crossover from QMBS to QI by changing the Ising coupling($J$) and longitudinal field($h$) simultaneously while keeping their r…
Complexity of dynamics is at the core of quantum many-body chaos and exhibits a hierarchical feature: higher-order complexity implies more chaotic dynamics. Conventional ergodicity in thermalization processes is a manifestation of the lowest order complexity, which is represented by the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) stating that individual energy eigenstates are thermal. Here, we propose a higher-order generalization of the ETH, named the $ k $-ETH ($ k=1,2,\dots $), to quantify higher-order complexity of quantum many-body dynamics at the level of individual energy eigenstates, wh…
Thermalization is a ubiquitous process of statistical physics, in which details of few-body observables are washed out in favor of a featureless steady state. Even in isolated quantum many-body systems, limited to reversible dynamics, thermalization typically prevails. However, in these systems, there is another possibility: many-body localization (MBL) can result in preservation of a non-thermal state. While disorder has long been considered an essential ingredient for this phenomenon, recent theoretical work has suggested that a quantum many-body system with a uniformly increasing field -- b…
Relaxation of few-body quantum systems can strongly depend on the initial state when the system's semiclassical phase space is mixed, i.e., regions of chaotic motion coexist with regular islands. In recent years, there has been much effort to understand the process of thermalization in strongly interacting quantum systems that often lack an obvious semiclassical limit. Time-dependent variational principle (TDVP) allows to systematically derive an effective classical (nonlinear) dynamical system by projecting unitary many-body dynamics onto a manifold of weakly-entangled variational states. We …
Understanding quantum thermalization through entanglement build-up in isolated quantum systems addresses fundamental questions on how unitary dynamics connects to statistical physics. Here, we study the spin dynamics and approach towards local thermal equilibrium of a macroscopic ensemble of S = 3 spins prepared in a pure coherent spin state, tilted compared to the magnetic field, under the effect of magnetic dipole-dipole interactions. The experiment uses a unit filled array of 104 chromium atoms in a three dimensional optical lattice, realizing the spin-3 XXZ Heisenberg model. The buildup of…
We study numerically the problem of dynamical thermalization of interacting cold fermionic atoms placed in an isolated Sinai-oscillator trap. This system is characterized by a quantum chaos regime for one-particle dynamics. We show that for a many-body system of cold atoms the interactions, with a strength above a certain quantum chaos border given by the Aberg criterion, lead to the Fermi-Dirac distribution and relaxation of many-body initial states to the thermalized state in absence of any contact with a thermostate. We discuss the properties of this dynamical thermalization and its links w…
In statistical mechanics, a small system exchanges conserved quantities---heat, particles, electric charge, etc.---with a bath. The small system thermalizes to the canonical ensemble, or the grand canonical ensemble, etc., depending on the conserved quantities. The conserved quantities are represented by operators usually assumed to commute with each other. This assumption was removed within quantum-information-theoretic (QI-theoretic) thermodynamics recently. The small system's long-time state was dubbed ``the non-Abelian thermal state (NATS).'' We propose an experimental protocol for observi…
We study the complex quantum dynamics of a system of many interacting atoms in an elongated anharmonic trap. The system is initially in a Bose-Einstein condensed state, well described by Thomas-Fermi profile in the elongated direction and the ground state in the transverse directions. After a sudden quench to a coherent superposition of the ground and lowest energy transverse modes, quantum dynamics starts. We describe this process employing a three-mode many-body model. The experimental realization of this system displays decaying oscillations of the atomic density distribution. While a mean-…
Isolated quantum many-body systems with integrable dynamics generically do not thermalize when taken far from equilibrium. As one perturbs such systems away from the integrable point, thermalization sets in, but the nature of the crossover from integrable to thermalizing behavior is an unresolved and actively discussed question. We explore this question by studying the dynamics of the momentum distribution function in a dipolar quantum Newton's cradle consisting of highly magnetic dysprosium atoms. This is accomplished by creating the first one-dimensional Bose gas with strong magnetic dipole-…
Reply to "Comment on `Quenches in quantum many-body systems: One-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model reexamined' ''
在他对Roux的论文[Phys. Rev. A 79，021608（R）（2009）]的评论[见前面的评论，Phys. Rev. A 82，037601（2010）]中，Rigol认为猝灭后的能量分布与标准统计系综无关，不能解释热化。后者被认为是源于他所谓的本征态热化假设，并归结为这样一个事实，即简单的可观测量预计是能量的平滑函数。在这篇回复中，我们表明，Roux的观察和讨论与Rigol讨论的预期热化情景之间没有矛盾或混淆。此外，我们还强调了其他一些重要的方面，特别是温度的定义和系综的等价性，尽管我们相信它们对热化的讨论是必不可少的，但它们更难以用数值来表示。这些评论可能是感兴趣的人在有限尺寸系统上获得的数据的解释感兴趣。
Thermalization of random-field Heisenberg spin chain is probed by time evolution of density correlation functions. Studying the impacts of average energies of initial product states on dynamics of the system, we provide arguments in favor of the existence of a mobility edge in the large system-size limit.
