No Arabic abstract
The absence of energy dissipation leads to an intriguing out-of-equilibrium dynamics for ultracold polar gases in optical lattices, characterized by the formation of dynamically-bound on-site and inter-site clusters of two or more particles, and by an effective blockade repulsion. These effects combined with the controlled preparation of initial states available in cold gases experiments can be employed to create interesting out-of-equilibrium states. These include quasi-equilibrated effectively repulsive 1D gases for attractive dipolar interactions and dynamically-bound crystals. Furthermore, non-equilibrium polar lattice gases can offer a promising scenario for the study of many-body localization in the absence of quenched disorder. This fascinating out-of-equilibrium dynamics for ultra-cold polar gases in optical lattices may be accessible in on-going experiments.
One-dimensional polar gases in deep optical lattices present a severely constrained dynamics due to the interplay between dipolar interactions, energy conservation, and finite bandwidth. The appearance of dynamically-bound nearest-neighbor dimers enhances the role of the $1/r^3$ dipolar tail, resulting, in the absence of external disorder, in quasi-localization via dimer clustering for very low densities and moderate dipole strengths. Furthermore, even weak dipoles allow for the formation of self-bound superfluid lattice droplets with a finite doping of mobile, but confined, holons. Our results, which can be extrapolated to other power-law interactions, are directly relevant for current and future lattice experiments with magnetic atoms and polar molecules.
In this paper we first compute the out-of-time-order correlators (OTOC) for both a phenomenological model and a random-field XXZ model in the many-body localized phase. We show that the OTOC decreases in power law in a many-body localized system at the scrambling time. We also find that the OTOC can also be used to distinguish a many-body localized phase from an Anderson localized phase, while a normal correlator cannot. Furthermore, we prove an exact theorem that relates the growth of the second Renyi entropy in the quench dynamics to the decay of the OTOC in equilibrium. This theorem works for a generic quantum system. We discuss various implications of this theorem.
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 quantum correlation during the dynamics, especially as the angle approaches pi/2, is supported by comparison with an improved numerical quantum phase-space method and further confirmed by the observation that our isolated system thermalizes under its own dynamics, reaching a steady state consistent with the one extracted from a thermal ensemble with a temperature dictated from the systems energy. This indicates a scenario of quantum thermalization which is tied to the growth of entanglement entropy. Although direct experimental measurements of the Renyi entropy in our macroscopic system are unfeasible, the excellent agreement with the theory, which can compute this entropy, does indicate entanglement build-up.
Motivated by the question of whether disorder is a prerequisite for localization to occur in quantum many-body systems, we study a frustrated one-dimensional spin chain, which supports localized many-body eigenstates in the absence of disorder. When the system is prepared in an initial state with one domain wall, it exhibits characteristic signatures of quasi-many-body localization (quasi- MBL), including initial state memory retention, an exponentially increasing lifetime with enlarging the size of the system, a logarithmic growth of entanglement entropy, and a logarithmic light cone of an out-of-time-ordered correlator. We further show that the localized many-body eigenstates can be manipulated as pseudospin-1/2s and thus could potentially serve as qubits. Our findings suggest a new route of using frustration to access quasi-MBL and preserve quantum coherence.
In a many-body localized (MBL) quantum system, the ergodic hypothesis breaks down completely, giving rise to a fundamentally new many-body phase. Whether and under which conditions MBL can occur in higher dimensions remains an outstanding challenge both for experiments and theory. Here, we experimentally explore the relaxation dynamics of an interacting gas of fermionic potassium atoms loaded in a two-dimensional optical lattice with different quasi-periodic potentials along the two directions. We observe a dramatic slowing down of the relaxation for intermediate disorder strengths and attribute this partially to configurational rare-region effects. Beyond a critical disorder strength, we see negligible relaxation on experimentally accessible timescales, indicating a possible transition into a two-dimensional MBL phase. Our experiments reveal a distinct interplay of interactions, disorder, and dimensionality and provide insights into regimes where controlled theoretical approaches are scarce.