We find that a flat-band fermion system with interactions and without disorders exhibits non-thermalized ergodicity-breaking dynamics, an analog of many-body localization (MBL). In the previous works, we observed flat-band many-body localization (FMBL) in the Creutz ladder model. The origin of FMBL is a compact localized state governed by local integrals of motion (LIOMs), which are to be obtained explicitly. In this work, we clarify the dynamical aspects of FMBL. We first study dynamics of two-particles, and find that the states are not substantially modified by weak interactions, but the periodic time evolution of entanglement entropy emerges as a result of a specific mechanism inherent in the system. On the other hand, as the strength of the interactions is increased, the modification of the states takes place with inducing instability of the LIOMs. Furthermore, many-body dynamics of the system at finite fillings is numerically investigated by time-evolving block decimation (TEBD) method. For a suitable choice of the filling, non-thermal and low entangled dynamics appears. This behavior is a typical example of the disorder-free FMBL.
We study disorder-free many-body localization in the flat-band Creutz ladder, which was recently realized in cold-atoms in an optical lattice. In a non-interacting case, the flat-band structure of the system leads to a Wannier wavefunction localized on four adjacent lattice sites. In the flat-band regime both with and without interactions, the level spacing analysis exhibits Poisson-like distribution indicating the existence of disorder-free localization. Calculations of the inverse participation ratio support this observation. Interestingly, this type of localization is robust to weak disorde…
We generate translationally invariant systems exhibiting many-body localization from All-Bands- Flat single particle lattice Hamiltonians dressed with suitable short-range many-body interactions. This phenomenon - dubbed Many-Body Flatband Localization (MBFBL) - is based on symmetries of both single particle and interaction terms in the Hamiltonian, and it holds for any interaction strength. We propose a generator of MBFBL Hamiltonians which covers both interacting bosons and fermions for arbitrary lattice dimensions, and we provide explicit examples of MBFBL models in one and two lattice dime…
We investigate the transition from the many-body localized phase to the ergodic thermalized phase at an infinite temperature in an $XY$ spin chain with $L$ spins, which experiences power-law decaying interactions in the form of $V_{ij}\propto1/\left|i-j\right|^α$ ($i,j=1,\cdots,L$) and a random transverse field. By performing large-scale exact diagonalization for the chain size up to $L=18$, we systematically analyze the energy gap statistics, half-chain entanglement entropy, and uncertainty of the entanglement entropy of the system at different interaction exponents $α$. The finite-size criti…
We theoretically investigate the many-body localization phase transition in a one-dimensional Ising spin chain with random long-range spin-spin interactions, $V_{ij}\propto\left|i-j\right|^{-α}$, where the exponent of the interaction range $α$ can be tuned from zero to infinitely large. By using exact diagonalization, we calculate the half-chain entanglement entropy and the energy spectral statistics and use them to characterize the phase transition towards the many-body localization phase at infinite temperature and at sufficiently large disorder strength. We perform finite-size scaling to ex…
Flat bands and dynamical localization of binary mixtures of Bose-Einstein condensates, with spin-orbit coupling subjected to a deep optical lattice which is shaking in time and to a periodic time modulation of the Zeeman field, are investigated. In contrast with usual dynamical localization in the absence of spin-orbit coupling, we find that to fully suppress the tunneling in the system the optical lattice shaking is not enough, and a proper tuning of the spin-orbit term, achievable via the Zeeman field modulation, is also required. This leads to a sequence of Zeeman parameter values where ene…
We report on the engineering of a non-dispersive (flat) energy band in a geometrically frustrated lattice of micro-pillar optical cavities. By taking advantage of the non-hermitian nature of our system, we achieve bosonic condensation of exciton-polaritons into the flat band. Due to the infinite effective mass in such band, the condensate is highly sensitive to disorder and fragments into localized modes reflecting the elementary eigenstates produced by geometric frustration. This realization offers a novel approach to studying coherent phases of light and matter under the controlled interplay…
Aharonov-Bohm (AB) caging, a special flat-band localization mechanism, has spurred great interest in different areas of physics. AB caging can be harnessed to explore the rich and exotic physics of quantum transport in flatband systems, where geometric frustration, disorder and correlations act in a synergetic and distinct way than in ordinary dispersive band systems. In contrast to the ordinary Anderson localization, where disorder induces localization and prevents transport, in flat band systems disorder can induce mobility, a phenomenon dubbed inverse Anderson transition. Here, we report on…
In this work, we present bilayer flat-band Hamiltonians, in which all bulk states are localized and specified by extensive local integrals of motion (LIOMs). The present systems are bilayer extension of Creutz ladder, which is studied previously. In order to construct models, we employ building blocks, cube operators, which are linear combinations of fermions defined in each cube of the bilayer lattice. There are eight cubic operators, and the Hamiltonians are composed of the number operators of them, the LIOMs. A suitable arrangement of locations of the cube operators is needed to have exact …
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…
Controllable Rydberg atom arrays have provided new insights into fundamental properties of quantum matter both in and out of equilibrium. In this work, we study the effect of experimentally relevant positional disorder on Rydberg atoms trapped in a 2D square lattice under anti-blockade (facilitation) conditions. We show that the facilitation conditions lead the connectivity graph of a particular subspace of the full Hilbert space to form a 2D Lieb lattice, which features a singular flat band. Remarkably, we find three distinct regimes as the disorder strength is varied: a critical regime, a de…
We clarify the interplay and competition between disorder and flat band in the Creutz ladder with inter-particle interactions focusing on the system's dynamics. Without disorder, the Creutz ladder exhibits flat-band many-body localization (FMBL). In this work, we find that disorder generates drastic effects on the system, i.e., addition of it induces a thermal phase first and further increase of it leads the system to the conventional many-body-localized (MBL) phase. The competition gives novel localization properties and unconventional quench dynamics to the system. We first draw the global s…
We systematically study the effect of disorder and interactions on a quasi-one dimensional diamond chain possessing flat bands. Disorder localizes all the single particle eigenstates, while at low disorder strengths we obtain weak flat-band based localization (FBL), at high disorder strengths, we see conventional Anderson localization (AL). The compactly localized (CL) eigenstates of flat bands show a persisting oscillatory recurrence in the study of single-particle wavepacket dynamics. For low disorder a damped oscillatory recurrence behavior is observed which is absent for high disorder. Non…
Quantum simulation in experiments of many-body systems may bring new phenomena which are not well studied theoretically. Motivated by a recent work of quantum simulation on a superconducting ladder circuit, we investigate the rung-pair localization of the Bose-Hubbard ladder model without quenched disorder. Our results show that, in the hard-core limit, there exists a rung-pair localization both at the edges and in the bulk. Using center-of-mass frame, the two-particle system can be mapped to an effective single-particle system with an approximate sub-lattice symmetry. Under the condition of h…
We propose an ultracold-atom setting where a fermionic superfluidity with attractive s-wave interaction is uploaded in a non-Hermitian Lieb optical lattice. The existence of a real-energy flat band solution is revealed. We show that the interplay between the skin effect and flat-band localization leads to exotic localization properties. We develop a multiband mean-field description of this system and use both order parameters and superfluid weight to describe the phase transition. A relation between the superfluid weight and non-Hermitian quantum metric of the quantum states manifold is built.…
In this work, we study the entanglement and topological properties of an extended flat-band Creutz ladder by considering a compacted localized state (CLS). Based on the CLS picture, we find a multiple flat-band extension from the conventional two flat-band Creutz ladder. A simple vertical inter-chain coupling leads to a four complete flat-band system and creates an additive $π$-flux pattern on the Creutz ladder. Interestingly, the strong coupling induces a topological phase transition where the distribution of CLSs is modified: upper and lower flat-band CLSs are paired up. This pairing leads t…
We present comparatively simple two-dimensional and three-dimensional checkerboard-like optical lattices possessing nontrivial topological properties. By simple tuning of the parameters these lattices can have a topological insulating phase, a topological semi-metallic phase, or a trivial insulating phase. This allows study of different topological phase transitions within a single cold atom system. In the topologically nontrivial phases flat bands appear at the surfaces of the system. These surface states possess short localization lengths such that they are observable even in systems with sm…
