The many-body localization (MBL) proximity effect is an intriguing phenomenon where a thermal bath localizes due to the interaction with a disordered system. The interplay of thermal and nonergodic behavior in these systems gives rise to a rich phase diagram, whose exploration is an active field of research. In this paper, we study a bosonic Hubbard model featuring two particle species representing the bath and the disordered system. Using state-of-the-art numerical techniques, we investigate the dynamics of the model in different regimes, based on which we obtain a tentative phase diagram as a function of coupling strength and bath size. When the bath is composed of a single particle, we observe clear signatures of a transition from an MBL proximity effect to a delocalized phase. Increasing the bath size, however, its thermalizing effect becomes stronger and eventually the whole system delocalizes in the range of moderate interaction strengths studied. In this regime, we characterize particle transport, revealing diffusive behavior of the originally localized bosons.
The many-body localization (MBL) proximity effect is an intriguing phenomenon where a thermal bath localizes due to the interaction with a disordered system. The interplay of thermal and nonergodic behavior in these systems gives rise to a rich phase diagram, whose exploration is an active field of research. In this paper, we study a bosonic Hubbard model featuring two particle species representing the bath and the disordered system. Using state-of-the-art numerical techniques, we investigate the dynamics of the model in different regimes, based on which we obtain a tentative phase diagram as a function of coupling strength and bath size. When the bath is composed of a single particle, we observe clear signatures of a transition from an MBL proximity effect to a delocalized phase. Increasing the bath size, however, its thermalizing effect becomes stronger and eventually the whole system delocalizes in the range of moderate interaction strengths studied. In this regime, we characterize particle transport, revealing diffusive behavior of the originally localized bosons.
Closed generic quantum many-body systems may fail to thermalize under certain conditions even after long times, a phenomenon called many-body localization (MBL). Numerous studies support the stability of the MBL phase in strongly disordered one-dimensional systems. However, the situation is much less clear when a small part of the system is ergodic, a scenario which also has important implications for the existence of many-body localization in higher dimensions. Here we address this question experimentally using a large-scale quantum simulator of ultracold bosons in a two-dimensional optical lattice. We prepare two-component mixtures of varying relative population and implement a disorder potential which is only experienced by one of the components. The second non-disordered ''clean'' component plays the role of a bath of adjustable size that is collisionally coupled to the ''dirty'' component. Our experiments show how the dynamics of the dirty component, which, when on its own, show strong evidence of localization, become affected by the coupling to the clean component. For a high clean population, the clean component appears to behave as an effective bath for the system which leads to its delocalization, while for a smaller clean population, the ability of the bath to destabilize the system becomes strongly reduced. Our results reveal how a finite-sized quantum system can bring another one towards thermalization, in a regime of complex interplay between disorder, tunneling and intercomponent interactions. They provide a new benchmark for effective theories aiming to capture the complex physics of MBL in the weakly localized regime.
Closed generic quantum many-body systems may fail to thermalize under certain conditions even after long times, a phenomenon called many-body localization (MBL).Numerous studies support the stability of the MBL phase in strongly disordered one-dimensional systems.However, the situation is much less clear when a small part of the system is ergodic, a scenario which also has important implications for the existence of many-body localization in higher dimensions.Here we address this question experimentally using a largescale quantum simulator of ultracold bosons in a two-dimensional optical lattice.We prepare two-component mixtures of varying relative population and implement a disorder potential which is experienced only by one of the components.The second nondisordered "clean" component plays the role of a bath of adjustable size that is collisionally coupled to the "dirty" component.Our experiments show how the dynamics of the dirty component, which, when on its own, show strong evidence of localization, become affected by the coupling to the clean component.For a high clean population, the clean component appears to behave as an effective bath for the system which leads to its delocalization, while for a smaller clean population, the ability of the bath to destabilize the system becomes strongly reduced.Our results reveal how a finite-sized quantum system can bring another one towards thermalization, in a regime of complex interplay between disorder, tunneling, and intercomponent interactions.They provide a new benchmark for effective theories aiming to capture the complex physics of MBL in the weakly localized regime.
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.
Abstract We review our recent results on Anderson localization in systems of two interacting particles coupled by contact interactions. Based on an exact mapping to an effective single-particle problem, we numerically investigate the occurrence of metal-insulator phase transitions for the pair in two-(2D) and three-dimensional (3D) disordered lattices. In two dimensions, we find that interactions cause an exponential enhancement of the pair localization length with respect to its single-particle counterpart, but do not induce a delocalization transition. In particular we show that previous claims of 2D interaction-induced Anderson transitions are the results of strong finite-size effects. In three dimensions we find that the pair undergoes a metal-insulator transition belonging to the same (orthogonal) universality class of the noninteracting model. We then explore the phase diagram in the space of energy E, disorder W and interaction strength U, which reveals a rich and counterintuitive structure, endowed with multiple metallic and insulating phases. We point out that this phenomenon originates from the molecular and scattering-like nature of the pair states available at given energy and disorder strength.
We discuss the onset of many-body localization in a one-dimensional system composed of a XXZ quantum spin chain and a Bose-Hubbard model linearly coupled together. We consider two complementary setups, depending whether spatial disorder is initially imprinted on spins or on bosons; in both cases, we explore the conditions for the disordered portion of the system to localize by proximity of the other clean half. Assuming that the dynamics of one of the two parts develops on shorter time scales than the other, we can adiabatically eliminate the fast degrees of freedom, and derive an effective Hamiltonian for the system's remainder using projection operator techniques. Performing a locator expansion on the strength of the many-body interaction term or on the hopping amplitude of the effective Hamiltonian thus derived, we present results on the stability of the many-body localized phases induced by proximity effect. We also briefly comment on the feasibility of the proposed model through modern quantum optics architectures, with the long-term perspective to realize experimentally, in composite open systems, Anderson or many-body localization proximity effects.
We study the potential influence of the particle multi-occupations on the stability of many-body localization in the disordered Bose-Hubbard model. Within the higher-energy section of the dynamical phase diagram, we find that there is no apparent finite-size boundary drift between the thermal phase and the many-body localized regime. We substantiate this observation by introducing the Van Vleck perturbation theory into the field of many-body localization. The appropriateness of this method rests largely on the peculiar Hilbert-space structure enabled by the particles' Bose statistics. The situation is reversed in the lower-energy section of the dynamical phase diagram, where the significant finite-size boundary drift pushes the putative many-body localized regime up to the greater disorder strengths. We utilize the algebraic projection method to make a connection linking the disordered Bose-Hubbard model in the lower-energy section to an intricate disordered spin chain model. This issue of the finite-size drift could hence be analogous to what happens in the disordered Heisenberg chain. Both trends might be traced back to the particles' intrinsic or emergent single-occupancy constraint such as the spin-1/2, hard-core boson, or spinless fermion degrees of freedom.