Quantum coherence quantifies the amount of superposition a quantum state can have in a given basis. Since there is a difference in the structure of eigenstates of the ergodic and many-body localized systems, we expect them also to differ in terms of their coherences in a given basis. Here, we numerically calculate different measures of quantum coherence in the excited eigenstates of an interacting disordered Hamiltonian as a function of the disorder. We show that quantum coherence can be used as an order parameter to detect the well-studied ergodic to many-body-localized phase transition. We also perform quantum quench studies to distinguish the behavior of coherence in thermalized and localized phases. We then present a protocol to calculate measurement-based localizable coherence to investigate the thermal and many-body localized phases. The protocol allows one to investigate quantum correlations experimentally in a non-destructive way, in contrast to measures that require tracing out a subsystem, which always destroys coherence and correlation.
We report the analogue simulation of an ergodiclocalized junction by using an array of 12 coupled superconducting qubits. To perform the simulation, we fabricated a superconducting quantum processor that is divided into two domains: a driven domain representing an ergodic system, while the second is localized under the effect of disorder. Due to the overlap between localized and delocalized states, for small disorder there is a proximity effect and localization is destroyed. To experimentally investigate this, we prepare a microwave excitation in the driven domain and explore how deep it can p…
We study the transition from a many-body localized phase to an ergodic phase in spin chain with correlated random magnetic fields. Using multiple statistical measures like gap statistics and extremal entanglement spectrum distributions, we find the phase diagram in the disorder-correlation plane, where the transition happens at progressively larger values of the correlation with increasing values of disorder. We then show that one can use the average of sample variance of magnetic fields as a single parameter which encodes the effects of the correlated disorder. The distributions and averages …
We investigate the stability of the many-body localized (MBL) phase for a system in contact with a single ergodic grain, modelling a Griffiths region with low disorder. Our numerical analysis provides evidence that even a small ergodic grain consisting of only 3 qubits can delocalize a localized chain, as soon as the localization length exceeds a critical value separating localized and extended regimes of the whole system. We present a simple theory, consistent with the arguments in [Phys. Rev. B 95, 155129 (2017)], that assumes a system to be locally ergodic unless the local relaxation time, …
The collective and quantum behavior of many-body systems may be harnessed to achieve fast charging of energy storage devices, which have been recently dubbed quantum batteries. In this paper, we present an extensive numerical analysis of energy flow in a quantum battery described by a disordered quantum Ising chain Hamiltonian, whose equilibrium phase diagram presents many-body localized (MBL), Anderson localized (AL), and ergodic phases. We demonstrate that i) the low amount of entanglement of the MBL phase guarantees much better work extraction capabilities than the ergodic phase and ii) int…
Some interacting disordered many-body systems are unable to thermalize when the quenched disorder becomes larger than a threshold value. Although several properties of nonzero energy density eigenstates (in the middle of the many-body spectrum) exhibit a qualitative change across this many-body localization (MBL) transition, many of the commonly-used diagnostics only do so over a broad transition regime. Here, we provide evidence that the transition can be located precisely even at modest system sizes by sharply-defined changes in the distribution of extremal eigenvalues of the reduced density…
We study the transport properties and the spectral statistics of a one-dimensional closed quantum system of interacting spinless fermions in a quasiperiodic potential which produces a single particle mobility edge in the absence of interaction. For such systems, it has been shown that the many body eigenstates can be of three different kinds: extended and ETH (eigenstate thermalization hypothesis) obeying (thermal), localized and ETH violating (many body localized) and extended and ETH violating (non-ergodic extended). Here we investigate the non-ergodic extended phase from the point of view o…
Building on large-scale quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate the zero-temperature phase diagram of hard-core bosons in a random potential on site-centered Cayley trees with branching number $K=2$. In order to follow how the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) is affected by the disorder, we focus on both the zero-momentum density, probing the quantum coherence, and the one-body density matrix (1BDM) whose largest eigenvalue monitors the off-diagonal long-range order. We further study its associated eigenstate which brings useful information about the real-space properties of this leading…
Whether or not the thermodynamic entropy is equal to the entanglement entropy of an eigenstate, is of fundamental interest, and is closely related to the `Eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH)'. However, this has never been exploited as a diagnostic tool in many-body localized systems. In this work, we perform this diagnostic test on a clean interacting system (subjected to a static electric field) that exhibits three distinct phases: integrable, non-integrable ergodic and non-integrable many-body-localized (MBL). We find that in the non-integrable ergodic phase, the equivalence between t…
We chart out the ground state phase diagram and demonstrate the presence of a many-body localized (MBL) phase for an experimentally realizable one-dimensional (1D) constrained dipole boson model in the presence of an Aubry-Andre (AA) potential whose strength $λ_0$ can be tuned to precipitate an ergodic-MBL transition. We discuss the signature of such a transition in the quantum dynamics of the model by computing its response subsequent to a sudden quench of $λ_0$. We show that the MBL and the ergodic phases can be clearly distinguished by study of post-quench dynamics and provide an estimate f…
A prime characterization of many-body localized (MBL) systems is the entanglement of their eigenstates; in contrast to the typical ergodic phase whose eigenstates are volume law, MBL eigenstates obey an area law. In this work, we show that a spin-disordered Hubbard model has both a large number of area-law eigenstates as well as a large number of eigenstates whose entanglement scales logarithmically with system size (log-law). This model, then, is a microscopic Hamiltonian which is neither ergodic nor many-body localized. We establish these results through a combination of analytic arguments b…
We investigate the phase transition between an ergodic and a many-body localized phase in infinite anisotropic spin-$1/2$ Heisenberg chains with binary disorder. Starting from the Néel state, we analyze the decay of antiferromagnetic order $m_s(t)$ and the growth of entanglement entropy $S_{\textrm{ent}}(t)$ during unitary time evolution. Near the phase transition we find that $m_s(t)$ decays exponentially to its asymptotic value $m_s(\infty)\neq 0$ in the localized phase while the data are consistent with a power-law decay at long times in the ergodic phase. In the localized phase, $m_s(\inft…
Ergodicity breaking in matrix-product-state effective Hamiltonians
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leeds（利兹大学物理与天文学院）；University of Nottingham（诺丁汉大学）；Centre for the Mathematics and Theoretical Physics of Quantum Non-Equilibrium Systems, University of Nottingham（诺丁汉大学量子非平衡系统数学与理论物理中心）
Engineering non-ergodic properties in two dimensional quantum many-body systems
Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore（新加坡国立大学量子技术中心）；Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National University of Singapore（新加坡国立大学材料科学与工程系）；INPHYNI, Université Côte d’Azur, CNRS（尼斯蔚蓝海岸大学CNRS INPHYNI研究所）；Department of Physics, Washington University in St. Louis（圣路易斯华盛顿大学物理系）
We show that the magnetization of a single `qubit' spin weakly coupled to an otherwise isolated disordered spin chain exhibits periodic revivals in the localized regime, and retains an imprint of its initial magnetization at infinite time. We demonstrate that the revival rate is strongly suppressed upon adding interactions after a time scale corresponding to the onset of the dephasing that distinguishes many-body localized phases from Anderson insulators. In contrast, the ergodic phase acts as a bath for the qubit, with no revivals visible on the time scales studied. The suppression of quantum…
We experimentally study a periodically driven many-body localized system realized by interacting fermions in a one-dimensional quasi-disordered optical lattice. By preparing the system in a far-from-equilibrium state and monitoring the remains of an imprinted density pattern, we identify a localized phase at high drive frequencies and an ergodic phase at low ones. These two distinct phases are separated by a dynamical phase transition which depends on both the drive frequency and the drive strength. Our observations are quantitatively supported by numerical simulations and are directly connect…
The thermalization of isolated quantum many-body systems is deeply related to fundamental questions of quantum information theory. While integrable or many-body localized systems display non-ergodic behavior due to extensively many conserved quantities, recent theoretical studies have identified a rich variety of more exotic phenomena in between these two extreme limits. The tilted one-dimensional Fermi-Hubbard model, which is readily accessible in experiments with ultracold atoms, emerged as an intriguing playground to study non-ergodic behavior in a clean disorder-free system. While non-ergo…
Local entanglement between pairs of spins, as measured by concurrence, is investigated in a disordered spin model that displays a transition from an ergodic to a many-body localized phase in excited states. It is shown that the concurrence vanishes in the ergodic phase and becomes nonzero and increases in the many-body localized phase. This happen to be correlated with the transition in the spectral statistics from Wigner to Poissonian distribution. A scaling form is found to exist in the second derivative of the concurrence with the disorder strength. It also displays a critical value for the…
We review the physics of many-body localization in models with incommensurate potentials. In particular, we consider one-dimensional quasiperiodic models with single-particle mobility edges. Although a conventional perspective suggests that delocalized states act as a thermalizing bath for the localized states in the presence of of interactions, there is evidence that such systems can display non-ergodicity. This is in part due to the fact that the delocalized states do not have any kind of protection due to symmetry or topology and are thus susceptible to localization. A study of non-interact…
We study a model of interacting fermions in one dimension subject to random, uncorrelated onsite disorder. The model realizes an interaction-driven quantum phase transition between an ergodic and a many-body localized phase (MBL). We propose a single-particle framework to characterize these phases by the eigenstates (the natural orbitals) and the eigenvalues (the occupation spectrum) of the one-particle density matrix (OPDM) in many-body eigenstates. As a main result, we find that the natural orbitals are localized in the MBL phase, but delocalized in the ergodic phase. This qualitative change…
Subjecting a many-body localized system to a time-periodic drive generically leads to delocalization and a transition to ergodic behavior if the drive is sufficiently strong or of sufficiently low frequency. Here we show that a specific drive can have an opposite effect, taking a static delocalized system into the many-body localized phase. We demonstrate this effect using a one-dimensional system of interacting hardcore bosons subject to an oscillating linear potential. The system is weakly disordered, and is ergodic absent the driving. The time-periodic linear potential leads to a suppressio…
We investigate the anomalous metal arising by hole doping the Mott insulating state of the periodic Anderson model. Using Dynamical Mean-Field Theory we show that, as opposed to the electron-doped case, in the hole-doped regime the hybridization between localized and delocalized orbitals leads to the formation of composite quasi-particles reminiscent of the Zhang-Rice singlets. We compute the coherence temperature of this state, showing its exponentially small value at low dopings. As a consequence the weakly-doped Mott state deviates from the predictions of Fermi-liquid theory already at smal…
An important challenge in the field of many-body quantum dynamics is to identify non-ergodic states of matter beyond many-body localization (MBL). Strongly disordered spin chains with non-Abelian symmetry and chains of non-Abelian anyons are natural candidates, as they are incompatible with standard MBL. In such chains, real space renormalization group methods predict a partially localized, non-ergodic regime known as a quantum critical glass (a critical variant of MBL). This regime features a tree-like hierarchy of integrals of motion and symmetric eigenstates with entanglement entropy that s…
In two dimensions (2D), dephasing by a bath cuts off Anderson localization that would otherwise occur at any energy density for fermions with disorder. For an isolated system with short-range interactions, the system can be its own bath, exhibiting diffusive (non-Markovian) thermal density fluctuations. We recast the dephasing of weak localization due to a diffusive bath as a self-interacting polymer loop. We investigate the critical behavior of the loop in $d=4-ε$ dimensions, and find a nontrivial fixed point corresponding to a temperature $T^* \sim ε>0$ where the dephasing time diverges. Ass…
We compute and compare the decay lengths of several correlation functions and effective coupling constants in the many-body localized (MBL) phase. To this end, we consider the distribution of the logarithms of these couplings and correlators: in each case the log-coupling follows a normal distribution with mean and variance that grow linearly with separation. Thus, a localization length is asymptotically sharply defined for each of these quantities. These localization lengths differ numerically from one another, but all of them remain short up to the numerically observed MBL transition, indica…
We study systems which are close to or within the many-body localized (MBL) regime and are driven by strong electric field. In the ergodic regime, the disorder extends applicability of the equilibrium linear--response theory to stronger drivings, whereas the response of the MBL systems is very distinctive, revealing currents with damped oscillations. The oscillation frequency is independent of driving and the damping is not due to heating but rather due to dephasing. The details of damping depend on the system's history reflecting nonergodicity of the MBL phase, while the frequency of the osci…
The entanglement spectrum of the reduced density matrix contains information beyond the von Neumann entropy and provides unique insights into exotic orders or critical behavior of quantum systems. Here, we show that strongly disordered systems in the many-body localized phase have power-law entanglement spectra, arising from the presence of extensively many local integrals of motion. The power-law entanglement spectrum distinguishes many-body localized systems from ergodic systems, as well as from ground states of gapped integrable models or free systems in the vicinity of scale-invariant crit…
The Kondo and Periodic Anderson Model (PAM) are known to provide a microscopic picture of many of the fundamental properties of heavy fermion materials and, more generally, a variety of strong correlation phenomena in $4f$ and $5f$ systems. In this paper, we apply the Determinant Quantum Monte Carlo (DQMC) method to include disorder in the PAM, specifically the removal of a fraction $x$ of the localized orbitals. We determine the evolution of the coherence temperature $T^*$, where the local moments and conduction electrons become entwined in a heavy fermion fluid, with $x$ and with the hybridi…
We numerically investigate 1D Bose-Hubbard chains with onsite disorder by means of exact diagonalization. A primary focus of our work is on characterizing Fock-space localization in this model from the single-particle perspective. For this purpose, we compute the one-particle density matrix (OPDM) in many-body eigenstates. We show that the natural orbitals (the eigenstates of the OPDM) are extended in the ergodic phase and real-space localized when one enters into the MBL phase. Furthermore, the distributions of occupations of the natural orbitals can be used as measures of Fock-space localiza…
Quantum phase transitions are usually observed in ground states of correlated systems. Remarkably, eigenstate phase transitions can also occur at finite energy density in disordered, isolated quantum systems. Such transitions fall outside the framework of statistical mechanics as they involve the breakdown of ergodicity. Here, we consider what general constraints can be imposed on the nature of eigenstate transitions due to the presence of disorder. We derive Harris-type bounds on the finite-size scaling exponents of the mean entanglement entropy and level statistics at the many-body localizat…
Many-body localization (MBL) addresses the absence of thermalization in interacting quantum systems, with non-ergodic high-energy eigenstates behaving as ground states, only area-law entangled. However, computing highly excited many-body eigenstates using exact methods is very challenging. Instead, we show that one can address high-energy MBL physics using ground-state methods, which are much more amenable to many efficient algorithms. We find that a localized many-body ground state of a given interacting disordered Hamiltonian $\mathcal{H}_0$ is a very good approximation for a high-energy eig…
We introduce techniques for analysing the structure of quantum states of many-body localized (MBL) spin chains by identifying correlation clusters from pairwise correlations. These techniques proceed by interpreting pairwise correlations in the state as a weighted graph, which we analyse using an established graph theoretic clustering algorithm. We validate our approach by studying the eigenstates of a disordered XXZ spin chain across the MBL to ergodic transition, as well as the non-equilibrium dyanmics in the MBL phase following a global quantum quench. We successfully reproduce theoretical …
Addressing the role of quantum coherence in the interplay between the different matter constituents (electrons, phonons and spin) is a critical step towards understanding transition metal oxides and design complex materials with new functionalities. Here we use coherent vibrational control of onsite d-d electronic transitions in a model edge-sharing insulating transition metal oxide (CuGeO3) to single-out the effects of vibrational coherence in electron-phonon coupling. By comparing time domain experiments based on high and low frequency ultrashort pumps with a fully quantum description of pho…
