Many-body localization in a quantum system subject to a local periodic drive

Pranjal Bordia, Henrik P. Lüschen, Ulrich Schneider +2 more

Shuangyuan Ni, Taotao Hu, Hang Ren +5 more

Haoyue Li, Taotao Hu, Kang Xue +5 more

Dmitry A. Abanin, Wojciech De Roeck, François Huveneers

Banerjee, Sanchayan, Banerjee, Ayan, Tapan Mishra +1 more

We investigate the fate of a many-body localized phase in a non-Hermitian quasiperiodic model of hardcore bosons subjected to periodic driving. While in general, the many-body localized system is known to thermalize with increasing driving period due to Floquet heating, in this case, we demonstrate that the initially localized system first delocalizes and then localizes again, resulting in a re-entrant many-body localization (MBL) transition as a function of the driving period. Strikingly, further increase in the driving period results in a series of localization-delocalization transitions leaving behind traces of extended regimes (islands) in between MBL phases. Furthermore, non-Hermiticity renders the extended islands boundary-sensitive, resulting in a Floquet many-body skin effect under open boundaries. We present numerical evidence from spectral and dynamic studies, confirming these findings. Our study opens new pathways for understanding the interplay between non-Hermiticity and quasiperiodicity in driven systems.

Achilleas Lazarides, Arnab Das, Roderich Moessner

We study many-body localized quantum systems subject to periodic driving. We find that the presence of a mobility edge anywhere in the spectrum is enough to lead to delocalization for any driving strength and frequency. By contrast, for a fully localized many-body system, a delocalization transition occurs at a finite driving frequency. We present numerical studies on a system of interacting one-dimensional bosons and the quantum random energy model, as well as simple physical pictures accounting for those results.