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arXiv:2204.12730 · Physical Review Letters

Observation of Interaction-Induced Mobility Edge in an Atomic Aubry-André Wire

Yunfei Wang, Jia-Hui Zhang, Yuqing Li, Jizhou Wu, Wenliang Liu, Feng Mei, Ying Hu, Liantuan Xiao, Jie Ma, Cheng Chin, Suotang Jia

Published Sep 1, 2022• 107 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

A mobility edge, a critical energy separating localized and extended excitations, is a key concept for understanding quantum localization. The Aubry-André (AA) model, a paradigm for exploring quantum localization, does not naturally allow mobility edges due to self-duality. Using the momentum-state lattice of quantum gas of Cs atoms to synthesize a nonlinear AA model, we provide experimental evidence for a mobility edge induced by interactions. By identifying the extended-to-localized transition of different energy eigenstates, we construct a mobility-edge phase diagram. The location of a mobility edge in the low- or high-energy region is tunable via repulsive or attractive interactions. Our observation is in good agreement with the theory and supports an interpretation of such interaction-induced mobility edge via a generalized AA model. Our Letter also offers new possibilities to engineer quantum transport and phase transitions in disordered systems.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.129.103401

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Despite their potential similarity between the mosaic Aubry-André (MAA) and AA models, the MAA model allows mobility edges (MEs), whereas the AA model does not. Here we develop a new double quasiperiodic MAA (DMAA) model consisting of one primitive MAA with nonzero even-site potentials and the other modified one with both nonzero odd-site potentials and a tunable amplitude factor, to reveal how localization transitions evolve from MAA to AA models. Interplays and competitions among the extended, critical and localized states arising from superpositions of double quasi-periodic MAA potentials enable new twice and multiple localization-delocalization transitions besides the original single localization transition. Our numerical calculations on inverse participation ratio, normalized participation ratio, fractal dimension and real-space wavefunction distribution confirm such localization features. The continuum model simulations on the experimental polariton modes also yield consistent results and hence validate their experimental feasibility. The constructed DMAA model provides a new framework for studying the localization transition processes between two analogous quasiperiodic models and broadens the understanding of Anderson localization.

cond-mat.dis-nnCross-listedarXiv:2606.24720•Jun 24, 2026
A mobility edge, a critical energy separating localized and extended excitations, is a key concept for understanding quantum localization. The Aubry-André (AA) model, a paradigm for exploring quantum localization, does not naturally allow mobility edges due to self-duality. Using the momentum-state lattice of quantum gas of Cs atoms to synthesize a nonlinear AA model, we provide experimental evidence for a mobility edge induced by interactions. By identifying the extended-to-localized transition of different energy eigenstates, we construct a mobility-edge phase diagram. The location of a mobility edge in the low- or high-energy region is tunable via repulsive or attractive interactions. Our observation is in good agreement with the theory and supports an interpretation of such interaction-induced mobility edge via a generalized AA model. Our Letter also offers new possibilities to engineer quantum transport and phase transitions in disordered systems.
A generalization of the Aubry-Andr\'e model, the noninteracting Ganeshan-Pixley-Das Sarma model (GPD) introduced by Ganeshan et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 146601 (2015)], is known analytically to possess a mobility edge, allowing both extended and localized eigenstates to coexist. This mobility edge has been hypothesized to survive in closed many-body interacting systems, giving rise to a new nonergodic metallic phase. In this work, coupling the interacting GPD model to a thermal bath, we provide direct numerical evidence for multiple qualitative behaviors in the parameter space of disorder strength and energy level. In particular, we look at the bath-induced saturation of entanglement entropy to classify three behaviors: thermalized, nonergodic extended, and localized. We also extract the localization length in the localized phase using the long-time dynamics of the entanglement entropy and the spin imbalance. Our work demonstrates the rich localization landscape of generalized Aubry-Andr\'e models containing mobility edges in contrast to the simple Aubry-Andr\'e model with no mobility edge.
We propose quasiperiodic chains with tunable mobility edge physics, as a promising platform for engineering long-range quantum entanglement. Using the generalized Aubry-André model, we show that the mobility edges play a key role in manipulating long-range indirect interactions in these systems. Near the mobility edge, critical states exhibit unexpectedly strong correlations between sites that share similar local structures, regardless of their spatial separation. Remarkably, by tuning the mobility edge across the Fermi level, one can induce both adiabatic transport and abrupt switching of entanglement between distant sites. These results highlight the potential of aperiodic structures for controlling nonlocal quantum correlations, opening new avenues for entanglement-based applications in quasiperiodic systems.
In this paper, we explore quantum criticality in the disordered Aubry-Andr\'e (AA) model. For the pure AA model, it is well known that it hosts a critical point separating an extended phase and a localized insulator phase by tuning the strength of the quasiperiodic potential. Here we unearth that the disorder strength $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}$ contributes an independent relevant direction near the critical point of the AA model. Our scaling analyses show that the localization length $\ensuremath{\xi}$ scales with $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}$ as $\ensuremath{\xi}\ensuremath{\propto}{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}}^{\ensuremath{-}{\ensuremath{\nu}}_{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}}}$ with ${\ensuremath{\nu}}_{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}}$ a new critical exponent, which is estimated to be ${\ensuremath{\nu}}_{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}}\ensuremath{\approx}0.46$. This value is remarkably different from the counterparts for both the pure AA model and the Anderson model. Moreover, rich critical phenomena are discovered in the critical region spanned by the quasiperiodic and the disordered potentials. In particular, in the extended phase side, we show that the scaling theory satisfies a hybrid scaling form as a result of the overlap between the critical regions of the AA model and the Anderson localization.
We study the single-particle properties of two-dimensional quasicrystals where the underlying geometry of the tight-binding lattice is crystalline but the on-site potential is quasicrystalline. We will focus on the two-dimensional (2D) generalized Aubry-André model which has a varying form to its quasiperiodic potential, through a deformation parameter and varied irrational periods of cosine terms, which allows a continuous family of on-site quasicrystalline models to be studied. We show that the 2D generalized Aubry-André model exhibits many single-particle mobility edges which we confirm for finite systems and supports critical states across large parameter regions. Critical states are neither fully localized nor extended. We observe that diagonal quasicrystalline models can support many energy intervals of critical states in the spectrum while stabilizing both localized and extended states in other energy intervals; we refer to these as anomalous mobility edges. We show that critical states are present independent of system size through a scaling analysis of the inverse participation ratio and that they are present in spectra that also contain extended and localized states, confirming that at least one anomalous mobility edge is present. Due to this, these models exhibit anomalous diffusion of initially localized states across the majority of parameter regions, including deep in the normally localized regime. The presence of critical states in large parameter regimes and throughout the spectrum will have consequences for the many-body properties of quasicrystals, including the formation of the Bose glass and the potential to host a many-body localized phase. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
We investigate the possibility of a many-body mobility edge in the generalized Aubry-André (GAA) model with interactions using the Shift-Invert Matrix Product States (SIMPS) algorithm [Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 017201 (2017)]. The non-interacting GAA model is a one-dimensional quasiperiodic model with a self-duality-induced mobility edge. To search for a many-body mobility edge in the interacting case, we exploit the advantages of SIMPS that it targets many-body states in an energy-resolved fashion and does not require all many-body states to be localized for some to converge. Our analysis indicates that the targeted states in the presence of the single-particle mobility edge match neither `MBL-like' fully-converged localized states nor the fully delocalized case where SIMPS fails to converge. We benchmark the algorithm's output both for parameters that give fully converged, `MBL-like' localized states and for delocalized parameters where SIMPS fails to converge. In the intermediate cases, where the parameters produce a single-particle mobility edge, we find many-body states that develop entropy oscillations as a function of cut position at larger bond dimensions. These oscillations at larger bond dimensions, which are also found in the fully-localized benchmark but not the fully-delocalized benchmark, occur both at the band edge and center and may indicate convergence to a non-thermal state (either localized or critical).
Despite their potential similarity between the mosaic Aubry-André (MAA) and AA models, the MAA model allows mobility edges (MEs), whereas the AA model does not. Here we develop a new double quasiperiodic MAA (DMAA) model consisting of one primitive MAA with nonzero even-site potentials and the other modified one with both nonzero odd-site potentials and a tunable amplitude factor, to reveal how localization transitions evolve from MAA to AA models. Interplays and competitions among the extended, critical and localized states arising from superpositions of double quasi-periodic MAA potentials enable new twice and multiple localization-delocalization transitions besides the original single localization transition. Our numerical calculations on inverse participation ratio, normalized participation ratio, fractal dimension and real-space wavefunction distribution confirm such localization features. The continuum model simulations on the experimental polariton modes also yield consistent results and hence validate their experimental feasibility. The constructed DMAA model provides a new framework for studying the localization transition processes between two analogous quasiperiodic models and broadens the understanding of Anderson localization.