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On Stark Many-body localization perturbed by harmonic potential

Ruixiao Yao, Titas Chanda, Jakub Zakrzewski

Published Mar 22, 2021• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

We discuss properties of interacting spinless fermions in a tilted optical lattice as modeled by Heisenberg spin chain in magnetic (or electric) field changing linearly across the chain. The system shows genuine features of strong localization for a sufficiently large tilt with distinct features different from disorder induced localization. In particular, Stark many-body localization is characterized in time dynamics by a linear increase of the entanglement entropy followed by a saturation at a constant, time independent value -- both the number (classical) and the configuration (quantum) entropies saturate to a constant value. Similarly, the correlation with the initial state (the so called imbalance) stabilizes at a constant value (modulo large fluctuations coming from short time Bloch-type oscillations). The presence of an additional harmonic potential profoundly affects the dynamics of the model -- its behavior resembles standard MBL characteristics -- the logarithmic growth of the entanglement entropy in particular. In that case, we find strong revival phenomena associated with the manifold of equally spaced states, degenerate in the absence of the harmonic potential.

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Exploring Unique Characteristics in Stark Many-Body Localization

Chung Po Ching

Stark Many-Body Localization (MBL) is a phenomenon observed in quantum systems in the absence of disorder, where the presence of a linear potential, known as the Stark field, causes the localization. Our study aims to provide novel insight into the properties of Stark MBL and to discover unique entanglement characteristics specific to this phenomenon. The phase diagram analysis reveals different behavior with varying interaction strengths. Furthermore, we highlight the influence of domain wall structures on the breakdown of the entanglement entropy of the system. Moreover, the investigation of Out-of-Time-Ordered Correlator (OTOC) behavior demonstrates distinct responses to interactions based on domain wall configurations. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of Stark MBL and offer valuable insights into the entanglement properties of systems subjected to Stark potentials.

arXiv:2501.10211•Jan 17, 2025•1 citation
We discuss properties of interacting spinless fermions in a tilted optical lattice as modeled by Heisenberg spin chain in magnetic (or electric) field changing linearly across the chain. The system shows genuine features of strong localization for a sufficiently large tilt with distinct features different from disorder induced localization. In particular, Stark many-body localization is characterized in time dynamics by a linear increase of the entanglement entropy followed by a saturation at a constant, time independent value -- both the number (classical) and the configuration (quantum) entropies saturate to a constant value. Similarly, the correlation with the initial state (the so called imbalance) stabilizes at a constant value (modulo large fluctuations coming from short time Bloch-type oscillations). The presence of an additional harmonic potential profoundly affects the dynamics of the model -- its behavior resembles standard MBL characteristics -- the logarithmic growth of the entanglement entropy in particular. In that case, we find strong revival phenomena associated with the manifold of equally spaced states, degenerate in the absence of the harmonic potential.
We discuss nonergodic dynamics of interacting spinless fermions in a tilted optical lattice as modeled by a XXZ spin chain in a magnetic (or electric) field changing linearly across the chain. The time dynamics is studied using exact propagation for small chains and matrix product state techniques for larger system sizes. We consider both the initial N\'eel separable state and the quantum quench scenario, in which the initial state may be significantly entangled. We show that the entanglement dynamics is significantly different in both cases. In the former a rapid initial growth is followed by a saturation for sufficiently large tilt FFF. In the latter case the dynamics seems to be dominated by pair tunneling, and the effective tunneling rate scales as 1/F21/{F}^{2}1/F2. In the presence of an additional harmonic potential the imbalance is found to be entirely determined by a local effective tilt Floc{F}_{\text{loc}}Floc​; the entanglement entropy growth is modulated with frequency that follows 1/Floc21/{F}_{\mathrm{loc}}^{2}1/Floc2​ scaling first, but at long time the dynamics is determined rather by the curvature of the harmonic potential. Only for large tilts or sufficiently large curvatures, corresponding to the deeply localized regime, do we find logarithmic entanglement growth for the N\'eel initial state. The same curvature determines the long-time imbalance for large FFF, which reveals strong revival phenomena associated with the manifold of equally spaced states, degenerate in the absence of the harmonic potential.
The phenomenon of many-body Stark localization of bosons in tilted optical lattice is studied. Despite the fact that no disorder is necessary for Stark localization to occur, it is very similar to well-known many-body localization (MBL) in sufficiently strong disorder. Not only the mean gap ratio reaches Poissonian value as characteristic for localized situations, but also the eigenstates reveal multifractal character as in standard MBL. Stark localization enables a coexistence of spacially separated thermal and localized phases in the harmonic trap similarly to fermions. Stark localization may also lead to spectacular trapping of particles in a reversed harmonic field which naively might be considered as an unstable configuration.
In one-dimensional (1D) disorder-free interacting systems, a sufficiently strong linear potential can induce localization of the many-body eigenstates, a phenomenon dubbed as Stark many-body localization (MBL). In this paper, we investigate the fate of Stark MBL in 1D spinless fermions systems with long-range interactions, specifically focusing on the role of interaction strength. We obtain the Stark MBL phase diagrams by computing the mean gap ratio and many-body inverse participation ratio at half-filling. We show that, for short-range interactions, there is a qualitative symmetry between the limits of weak and strong interactions. However, this symmetry is absent in the case of long-range interactions, where the system is always Stark many-body localized at strong interactions, regardless of the linear potential strength. Furthermore, we study the dynamics of imbalance and entanglement with various initial states using time-dependent variational principle (TDVP) numerical methods. We reveal that the dynamical quantities display a strong dependence on the initial conditions, which suggests that the Hilbert-space fragmentation precludes thermalization. Our results demonstrate the robustness of Stark MBL even in the presence of long-range interactions and offer an avenue to explore MBL in disorder-free systems with long-range interactions.
In this paper, we study periodically modulated s=1/2s=1/2s=1/2 spin chain in a linear gradient potential (LP) that is generated by an external magnetic field. In the absence of the LP, the system has topological states that exhibit a magnetization plateau for a uniform external magnetic field. These topological states have a finite integer Chern number and their stability is clarified by an equivalent spinless fermion system derived by a Jordan-Wigner transformation. We show that the LP, which is nothing but a constant electric field in the spinless fermion system, destabilizes the topological states, because it induces localization called Wannier-Stark (WS) localization. We clarify the phase diagram in the presence of the LP and on-site diagonal disorder. To this end, we carefully study edge excitations under the open boundary condition, which are a hallmark of the topological order. We find a very interesting phenomenon indicating existence of a quasiedge modes that take the place of the genuine edge modes in certain parameter regions. This is a precursor of the WS localization realized in topological states. Finally, we investigate many-body localization induced by a sufficiently strong LP or disorder. To this end, we study the energy-level statistics for whole energy levels, and we find unexpected extended-state regimes located in intermediate potential-gradient and weak on-site disorder regimes. We verify this phenomenon by calculating variance of the entanglement entropy. The present system is closely related to quantum Hall state in two dimensions, and therefore our findings can be observed not only in experiments on ultracold atomic gases but also quantum Hall physics.
Disorder-free quantum many-body localization can strongly suppress transport while still enabling the dynamical buildup of computationally costly non-Clifford resources. In a tilted transverse-field Ising chain realizing disorder-free Stark many-body localization, we use the stabilizer Rényi entropy to quantify quantum magic (nonstabilizerness) and find that it remains finite and grows anomalously slowly over extended time windows before saturating to a size-dependent plateau deep in the strong-tilt regime, with pronounced initial-state selectivity. Upon increasing the Stark gradient, the long-time magic and half-chain entanglement exhibit consistent finite-size crossing behavior, indicating a crossover from ergodic dynamics to constrained localization. These results establish stabilizer-based magic as a practical complexity diagnostic of disorder-free ergodicity breaking and constrained dynamics, and provide an experimentally accessible route to benchmarking and designing near-term quantum simulators.
Stark Many-Body Localization (MBL) is a phenomenon observed in quantum systems in the absence of disorder, where the presence of a linear potential, known as the Stark field, causes the localization. Our study aims to provide novel insight into the properties of Stark MBL and to discover unique entanglement characteristics specific to this phenomenon. The phase diagram analysis reveals different behavior with varying interaction strengths. Furthermore, we highlight the influence of domain wall structures on the breakdown of the entanglement entropy of the system. Moreover, the investigation of Out-of-Time-Ordered Correlator (OTOC) behavior demonstrates distinct responses to interactions based on domain wall configurations. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of Stark MBL and offer valuable insights into the entanglement properties of systems subjected to Stark potentials.