Heidelberg 2015 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 15: Poster: Quantum Optics and Photonics I
Q 15.55: Poster
Monday, March 23, 2015, 17:00–19:00, C/Foyer
Many-Body Localization in Quasi-Random and Superlattice Geometries — •Henrik Lüschen1,2, Michael Schreiber1,2, Pranjal Bordia1,2, Sean Hodgman1,2, Immanuel Bloch1,2, and Ulrich Schneider1,2 — 1Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, Garching — 2Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München
Disordered systems have been the subject of great interest over the last few years, especially in the context of many-body localization (MBL) of interacting systems. So far, experimental studies have been using transport properties as observables and were mostly limited to the bosonic case. We have implemented a new setup that enables us to directly observe the breakdown of ergodicity and thermalization in the fermionic Aubrey-André model by monitoring local observables after a quantum quench.
Specifically, we use a superlattice to create an initial charge-density wave and measure the population imbalance between even and odd sites. While this imbalance quickly relaxes to zero in the clean system without disorder, at sufficiently strong quasi-disorder we observe a large remaining imbalance in the long term limit, indicating MBL. The imbalance hence directly demonstrates the absence of thermalization and can be used as an effective order parameter for MBL transitions.
Furthermore, we give an outlook on possible future experiments, elaborating on the possibilities of coupling a localized system to a phonon bath, as well as accessing spin degrees of freedom with our superlattice, e.g. observing singlet-triplet oscillations and creating spinordered states.