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arXiv:1908.03868 · Physical Review A

Many-body dynamical localization and thermalization

Christine Khripkov, Amichay Vardi, Doron Cohen

Published Apr 2, 2020• 7 citations
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Abstract

We show that a quantum dynamical localization effect can be observed in a generic thermalization process of two weakly coupled chaotic subsystems. Specifically, our model consists of the minimal experimentally relevant subsystems that exhibit chaos, which are 3-site Bose-Hubbard units. Due to the high dimensionality of the composite 6-site system, the quantum localization effect is weak and cannot be resolved merely by the breakdown of quantum-to-classical correspondence. Instead, we adopt an intrinsic definition of localization as the memory of initial conditions, which is not related to the underlying classical dynamics. We discuss the dynamics in the chaotic sea, and in the vicinity of the mobility edge, beyond which ergodization is suppressed.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.101.043603

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•Jan 1, 2020•0 citations
We show that a quantum dynamical localization effect can be observed in a generic thermalization process of two weakly coupled chaotic subsystems. Specifically, our model consists of the minimal experimentally relevant subsystems that exhibit chaos, which are 3-site Bose-Hubbard units. Due to the high dimensionality of the composite 6-site system, the quantum localization effect is weak and cannot be resolved merely by the breakdown of quantum-to-classical correspondence. Instead, we adopt an intrinsic definition of localization as the memory of initial conditions, which is not related to the underlying classical dynamics. We discuss the dynamics in the chaotic sea, and in the vicinity of the mobility edge, beyond which ergodization is suppressed.
We introduce a semiclassical theory for strong localization that may arise in the context of many-body thermalization. As a minimal model for thermalization we consider a few-site Bose-Hubbard model consisting of two weakly interacting subsystems that can exchange particles. The occupation of a subsystem (x) satisfies in the classical treatment a Fokker-Planck equation with a diffusion coefficient D(x). We demonstrate that it is possible to deduce from the classical description a quantum breaktime t^{*} and, hence, the manifestations of a strong localization effect. For this purpose it is essential to take the geometry of the energy shell into account and to make a distinction between different notions of phase-space exploration.
We explore a minimal paradigm for thermalization, consisting of two weakly coupled, low dimensional, nonintegrable subsystems. As demonstrated for Bose-Hubbard trimers, chaotic ergodicity results in a diffusive response of each subsystem, insensitive to the details of the drive exerted on it by the other. This supports the hypothesis that thermalization can be described by a Fokker-Planck equation. We also observe, however, that Levy-flight type anomalies may arise in mesoscopic systems, due to the wide range of time scales that characterize 'sticky' dynamics.
We investigate thermalization and the quantum-classical correspondence in the collective Bose-Hubbard model, focusing on the four-site case. Our analysis of the classical phase-space structure and its excited-state quantum phase transitions leads us to three dynamical regimes: symmetry-breaking low-energy states, an intermediate region where quantum and classical equilibrium states markedly disagree, and a high-energy regime with restored correspondence. The observed classical intermittency above the first excited-state quantum phase transition contrasts with quantum dynamics, which remains trapped in symmetry-breaking sectors despite the existence of a classically connected phase. This mismatch originates from the population of imbalance-carrying eigenstates and persists even for relatively large number of particles. Our results reveal unexpectedly slow convergence to the classical limit, signaling robust finite-size effects in collective many-body dynamics.
We numerically study a Bose-Hubbard ring of finite size with disorder containing a finite number of bosons that are subject to an on-site two-body interaction. Our results show that moderate interactions induce dynamical thermalization in this isolated system. In this regime the individual many-body eigenstates are well described by the standard thermal Bose-Einstein distribution for well-defined values of the temperature and the chemical potential, which depend on the eigenstate under consideration. We show that the dynamical thermalization conjecture works well at both positive and negative temperatures. The relations to quantum chaos, quantum ergodicity, and the Åberg criterion are also discussed.
We study whether a generic isolated quantum system initially set out of equilibrium can be considered as localized close to its initial state. Our approach considers the time evolution in the Krylov basis, which maps the system's dynamics onto that of a particle moving in a one-dimensional lattice where both the energy in the lattice sites and the tunneling from one lattice site to the next are inhomogeneous. By tying the dynamical propagation in the Krylov basis to that in the basis of microstates, we infer qualitative criteria that allow distinguishing systems that remain localized close to their initial state from systems that undergo quantum thermalization. These criteria are system-dependent and involve the expectation values and standard deviations of both the coupling strengths between Krylov states and their energy. We verify their validity by inspecting two cases: Anderson localization as a function of dimension and the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of a many-body dipolar spin system. We finally investigate the Wigner surmise and the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis that have both been proposed to characterize quantum chaotic systems. We show that when the average value of the nondiagonal terms in the Lanczos matrix is large compared to their fluctuations and to the fluctuations of the energy expectation values, which typically corresponds to delocalized quantum systems according to our criteria, there can be level repulsion of eigenenergies (also known as spectral rigidity), similar to that of the Wigner-Dyson statistics of energy levels; and we also demonstrate that in the same regime, the expectation values of typical local observables only weakly vary as a function of eigenstates, an important condition for the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. Our demonstration assumes that, in the chaotic regime, the observable is sufficiently diagonal in the basis of Krylov states. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
The experimental control and observation of quantum many-body systems has become a reality with the advent of ultracold quantum matter. The high level of isolation of these experiments, together with the development of novel measurement techniques, has revived a fundamental debate concerning the thermal equilibration of isolated quantum systems, commonly named "quantum thermalization". In this thesis we make use of a quantum-gas microscope to explore the thermalizing dynamics of highly isolated systems of ultracold bosonic atoms in optical lattices. The ability to prepare and control quantum systems made up of hundreds of atoms makes it possible to explore regimes that represent a challenge for classical numeric simulations. A major part of this dissertation deals with Bose-Hubbard systems in the presence of quenched disorder. We begin by studying the microscopic properties of its phases near equilibrium, where by tuning the strength of the disorder, observe features consistent with the emergence of a so-called Bose-glass phase. We then continue by preparing states far from equilibrium and exploring their quantum many-body dynamics. In particular, we observe signatures of the phenomenon of "many-body localization", which implies a breakdown of quantum thermalization. In addition, we study whether localized systems can be thermalized via the coupling to a bath of few degrees of freedom, i.e. a quantum bath. We do so by preparing a mixture of two interacting atomic species, where one acts as the bath and the other as the localized system. We do observe delocalizing dynamics for large enough baths, though in regimes of weak coupling localization can survive for extremely long times. The second main topic of this thesis is the thermalization of periodically driven many-body systems, so-called Floquet thermalization. In these systems, the absence of energy conservation eventually brings any initial state into a featureless infinite-temperature one. However, for sufficiently high frequencies this thermalization process can take arbitrarily long times, which can enable the engineering of exotic long-lived prethermal states. We use the high isolation of our system, together with the high sensitivity of quantum-gas microscopy, to measure the heating rates for a range of driving frequencies and interaction regimes. Our results show a dramatic suppression of the heating as the frequency of the drive is increased, which is consistent with theoretical expectations.