Quantum glassiness in clean strongly correlated systems: an example of topological overprotection

Benjamin J. Brown, Abbas Al-Shimary, Jiannis K. Pachos

Claudio Chamon

This Letter presents solvable examples of quantum many-body Hamiltonians of systems that are unable to reach their ground states as the environment temperature is lowered to absolute zero. These examples, three-dimensional generalizations of quantum Hamiltonians proposed for topological quantum computing, (1) have no quenched disorder, (2) have solely local interactions, (3) have an exactly solvable spectrum, (4) have topologically ordered ground states, and (5) have slow dynamical relaxation rates akin to those of strong structural glasses.

V. Yu. Irkhin, Yu. N. Skryabin

V. Yu. Irkhin, Yu. N. Skryabin

Angelo Russomanno

We consider a clean Josephson-junction chain coupled by one of its extremities to a thermal bath through a resistance. Considering the Langevin dynamics in the classical regime, in the case of Josephson energy much smaller than charging energy, we find that heat propagates logarithmically slowly through the system, rather than diffusively, as highlighted by the logarithmic increase in time of a thermalization length we define and by the logarithmically slow increase in time of the energy. This behavior -- typical of quantum Anderson or many-body localized systems -- is observed here also in a clean classical glassy Hamiltonian system. We argue that this phenomenon might imply strong robustness to the effect of ergodic inclusions for the nonergodic behavior in the charge-quantized regime.

Mikel Iraola, Niclas Heinsdorf, Dominik Leßnich +9 more