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arXiv:1503.07777 · Physical Review A

Disordered cold atoms in different symmetry classes

Fernanda Pinheiro, Jonas Larson

Published Aug 11, 2015• 3 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We consider an experimentally realizable model of noninteracting but randomly coupled atoms in a two-dimensional optical lattice. By choosing appropriate real or complex-valued random fields and species-dependent energy offsets, this system can be used to analyze effects of disorder in four different symmetry classes: the chiral BDI and AIII and the nonchiral A and AI. These chiral classes are known to support a metallic phase at zero energy, which here, due to the inevitable finite size of the system, should also persist in a neighborhood of nonzero energies. As we discuss, this is of particular interest for experiments involving quenches. Away from the center of the spectrum, we find that excitations appear as domain walls in the cases with time-reversal symmetry or as vortices in the cases where time-reversal symmetry is absent. Therefore, a quench in a system with uniform density would lead to the formation of either vortices or domain walls depending on the symmetry class. For the nonchiral models in classes A and AI, a population imbalance between the two atomic species naturally occurs. In these cases, one of the two species is seen to favor a more uniform density. We also study the onset of localization as the disorder strength is increased for the different classes, and by deriving an effective model for the nonchiral cases we show how their eigenstates remain extended for larger values of the coupling with the disorder when compared to the nonchiral ones.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.92.023612

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We consider an experimentally realizable model of noninteracting but randomly coupled atoms in a two-dimensional optical lattice. By choosing appropriate real or complex-valued random fields and species-dependent energy offsets, this system can be used to analyze effects of disorder in four different symmetry classes: the chiral BDI and AIII and the nonchiral A and AI. These chiral classes are known to support a metallic phase at zero energy, which here, due to the inevitable finite size of the system, should also persist in a neighborhood of nonzero energies. As we discuss, this is of particular interest for experiments involving quenches. Away from the center of the spectrum, we find that excitations appear as domain walls in the cases with time-reversal symmetry or as vortices in the cases where time-reversal symmetry is absent. Therefore, a quench in a system with uniform density would lead to the formation of either vortices or domain walls depending on the symmetry class. For the nonchiral models in classes A and AI, a population imbalance between the two atomic species naturally occurs. In these cases, one of the two species is seen to favor a more uniform density. We also study the onset of localization as the disorder strength is increased for the different classes, and by deriving an effective model for the nonchiral cases we show how their eigenstates remain extended for larger values of the coupling with the disorder when compared to the nonchiral ones.
Many-body localization for a system of bosons trapped in a one-dimensional lattice is discussed. Two models that may be realized for cold atoms in optical lattices are considered. The model with a random on-site potential is compared with previously introduced random interactions model. While the origin and character of the disorder in both systems is different they show interesting similar properties. In particular, many-body localization appears for a sufficiently large disorder as verified by a time evolution of initial density wave states as well as using statistical properties of energy levels for small system sizes. Starting with different initial states, we observe that the localization properties are energy-dependent which reveals an inverted many-body localization edge in both systems (that finding is also verified by statistical analysis of energy spectrum). Moreover, we consider computationally challenging regime of transition between many body localized and extended phases where we observe a characteristic algebraic decay of density correlations which may be attributed to subdiffusion (and Griffiths-like regions) in the studied systems. Ergodicity breaking in the disordered Bose–Hubbard models is compared with the slowing-down of the time evolution of the clean system at large interactions.
Anderson localization is studied for two flavors of massless Dirac fermions in two-dimensional space perturbed by static disorder that is invariant under a chiral symmetry (chS) and a time-reversal symmetry (TRS) operation which, when squared, is equal either to plus or minus the identity. The former TRS (symmetry class BDI) can, for example, be realized when the Dirac fermions emerge from spinless fermions hopping on a two-dimensional lattice with a linear energy dispersion such as the honeycomb lattice (graphene) or the square lattice with $\ensuremath{\pi}$ flux per plaquette. The latter TRS is realized by the surface states of three-dimensional Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}^{\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}}Z2​-topological band insulators in symmetry class CII. In the phase diagram parametrized by the disorder strengths, there is an infrared stable line of critical points for both symmetry classes BDI and CII. Here we discuss a ``global phase diagram'' in which disordered Dirac fermion systems in all three chiral symmetry classes, AIII, CII, and BDI, occur in four quadrants, sharing one corner which represents the clean Dirac fermion limit. This phase diagram also includes symmetry classes AII [e.g., appearing at the surface of a disordered three-dimensional Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}^{\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}}Z2​-topological band insulator in the spin-orbit (symplectic) symmetry class] and D (e.g., the random bond Ising model in two dimensions) as boundaries separating regions of the phase diagram belonging to the three chS classes AIII, BDI, and CII. Moreover, we argue that physics of Anderson localization in the CII phase can be presented in terms of a non-linear-$\ensuremath{\sigma}$ model (NL$\ensuremath{\sigma}$M) with a Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}^{\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}}Z2​-topological term. We thereby complete the derivation of topological or Wess-Zumino-Novikov-Witten terms in the NL$\ensuremath{\sigma}$M description of disordered fermionic models in all ten symmetry classes relevant to Anderson localization in two spatial dimensions.
We study the effects of generic short-ranged interactions on a system of two-dimensional (2D) Dirac fermions subject to a special kind of static disorder, often referred to as ``chiral.'' The noninteracting system is a member of the disorder class BDIBD\mathrm{I}BDI [M. R. Zirnbauer, J. Math. Phys. 37, 4986 (1996)]. It emerges, for example, as a low-energy description of a time-reversal invariant tight-binding model of spinless fermions on a honeycomb lattice, subject to random hopping, and possessing particle-hole symmetry. It is known that, in the absence of interactions, this disordered system is special in that it does not localize in 2D, but possesses extended states and a finite conductivity at zero energy, as well as a strongly divergent low-energy density of states. In the context of the hopping model, the short-range interactions that we consider are particle-hole symmetric density-density interactions. Using a perturbative one-loop renormalization group analysis, we show that the same mechanism responsible for the divergence of the density of states in the noninteracting system leads to an instability, in which the interactions are driven strongly relevant by the disorder. This result should be contrasted with the limit of clean Dirac fermions in 2D, which is stable against the inclusion of weak short-ranged interactions. Our work suggests a mechanism wherein a clean system, initially insensitive to interaction effects, can be made unstable to interactions upon the inclusion of weak static disorder. We dub this mechanism a ``disorder-driven Mott transition.'' Our result for 2D fermions also contrasts sharply with known results in one dimension, where a similar delocalized phase has been shown to be robust against the inclusion of weak interaction effects.
The chiral AIII symmetry class in the classification table of topological insulators contains topological phases classified by a winding number ν for each odd space dimension. An open problem for this class is the characterization of the phases and phase boundaries in the presence of strong disorder. In this work, we derive a covariant real-space formula for ν and, using an explicit one-dimensional disordered topological model, we show that ν remains quantized and nonfluctuating when disorder is turned on, even though the bulk energy spectrum is completely localized. Furthermore, ν remains robust even after the insulating gap is filled with localized states, but when the disorder is increased even further, an abrupt change of ν to a trivial value is observed. Using exact analytic calculations, we show that this marks a critical point where the localization length diverges. As such, in the presence of disorder, the AIII class displays markedly different physics from everything known to date, with robust invariants being carried entirely by localized states and bulk extended states emerging from an absolutely localized spectrum. Detailed maps and a clear physical description of the phases and phase boundaries are presented based on numerical and exact analytic calculations.
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