Abstract
It is the common wisdom that time evolution of a many-body system leads to thermalization and washes away quantum correlations. But one class of system—referred to as many-body localized—defy this expectation.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Altman, E. & Vosk, R. Universal dynamics and renormalization in many-body-localized systems. Annu. Rev. Condens. Matter Phys. 6, 383–409 (2015).
Nandkishore, R. & Huse, D. A. Many-body localization and thermalization in quantum statistical mechanics. Annu. Rev. Condens. Matter Phys. 6, 15–38 (2015).
Abanin, D. A., Altman, E., Bloch, I. & Serbyn, M. Ergodicity, entanglement and many-body localization. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.11065 (2018).
Anderson, P. W. Absence of diffusion in certain random lattices. Phys. Rev. 109, 1492–1505 (1958).
Basko, D., Aleiner, I. & Altshuler, B. Metal–insulator transition in a weakly interacting many-electron system with localized single-particle states. Ann. Phys. 321, 1126–1205 (2006).
Gornyi, I. V., Mirlin, A. D. & Polyakov, D. G. Interacting electrons in disordered wires: Anderson localization and low-T transport. Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 206603 (2005).
Imbrie, J. Z. On many-body localization for quantum spin chains. J. Stat. Phys. 163, 998–1048 (2016).
De Roeck, W., Huveneers, F., Müller, M. & Schiulaz, M. Absence of many-body mobility edges. Phys. Rev. B 93, 014203 (2016).
De Roeck, W. & Huveneers, F. Stability and instability towards delocalization in many-body localization systems. Phys. Rev. B 95, 155129 (2017).
Oganesyan, V. & Huse, D. A. Localization of interacting fermions at high temperature. Phys. Rev. B 75, 155111 (2007).
Pal, A. & Huse, D. A. Many-body localization phase transition. Phys. Rev. B 82, 174411 (2010).
Schreiber, M. et al. Observation of many-body localization of interacting fermions in a quasirandom optical lattice. Science 349, 842–845 (2015).
Smith, J. et al. Many-body localization in a quantum simulator with programmable random disorder. Nat. Phys. 12, 907–911 (2016).
Ovadia, M. et al. Evidence for a finite-temperature insulator. Sci. Rep. 5, 13503 (2015).
Žnidarič, M., Prosen, T. & Prelovšek, P. Many-body localization in the Heisenberg XXZ magnet in a random field. Phys. Rev. B 77, 064426 (2008).
Bardarson, J. H., Pollmann, F. & Moore, J. E. Unbounded growth of entanglement in models of many-body localization. Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 017202 (2012).
Lukin, A. et al. Probing entanglement in a many-body-localized system. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.09819 (2018).
Serbyn, M., Papić, Z. & Abanin, D. A. Local conservation laws and the structure of the many-body localized states. Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 127201 (2013).
Huse, D. A., Nandkishore, R. & Oganesyan, V. Phenomenology of fully many-body-localized systems. Phys. Rev. B 90, 174202 (2014).
Vosk, R. & Altman, E. Many-body localization in one dimension as a dynamical renormalization group fixed point. Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 067204 (2013).
Pekker, D. et al. Hilbert-glass transition: new universality of temperature-tuned many-body dynamical quantum criticality. Phys. Rev. X 4, 011052 (2014).
Bahri, Y., Vosk, R., Altman, E. & Vishwanath, A. Localization and topology protected quantum coherence at the edge of hot matter. Nat. Commun. 6, 7341 (2015).
Serbyn, M. et al. Interferometric probes of many-body localization. Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 147204 (2014).
Bauer, B. & Nayak, C. Area laws in a many-body localized state and its implications for topological order. J. Stat. Mech. Theory Exp. 2013, P09005 (2013).
Huse, D. A., Nandkishore, R., Oganesyan, V., Pal, A. & Sondhi, S. L. Localization-protected quantum order. Phys. Rev. B 88, 014206 (2013).
Ponte, P., Papić, Z., Huveneers, F. & Abanin, D. A. Many-body localization in periodically driven systems. Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 140401 (2015).
Lazarides, A., Das, A. & Moessner, R. Fate of many-body localization under periodic driving. Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 030402 (2015).
Abanin, D. A., Roeck, W. D. & Huveneers, F. Theory of many-body localization in periodically driven systems. Ann. Phys. 372, 1–11 (2016).
Khemani, V., Lazarides, A., Moessner, R. & Sondhi, S. L. Phase structure of driven quantum systems. Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 250401 (2016).
Else, D. V. & Nayak, C. Classification of topological phases in periodically driven interacting systems. Phys. Rev. B 93, 201103 (2016).
Watanabe, H. & Oshikawa, M. Absence of quantum time crystals. Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 251603 (2015).
Zhang, J. et al. Nature 543, 217–220 (2017).
Vosk, R., Huse, D. A. & Altman, E. Theory of the many-body localization transition in one-dimensional systems. Phys. Rev. X 5, 031032 (2015).
Potter, A. C., Vasseur, R. & Parameswaran, S. A. Universal properties of many-body delocalization transitions. Phys. Rev. X 5, 031033 (2015).
Bar Lev, Y., Cohen, G. & Reichman, D. R. Absence of diffusion in an interacting system of spinless fermions on a one-dimensional disordered lattice. Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 100601 (2015).
Agarwal, K., Gopalakrishnan, S., Knap, M., Müller, M. & Demler, E. Anomalous diffusion and Griffiths effects near the many-body localization transition. Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 160401 (2015).
Žnidarič, M., Scardicchio, A. & Varma, V. K. Diffusive and subdiffusive spin transport in the ergodic phase of a many-body localizable system. Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 040601 (2016).
Khemani, V., Lim, S. P., Sheng, D. N. & Huse, D. A. Critical properties of the many-body localization transition. Phys. Rev. X 7, 021013 (2017).
Zhang, S.-X. & Yao, H. Universal properties of many-body localization transitions in quasiperiodic systems. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.05958 (2018).
Maldacena, J., Shenker, S. H. & Stanford, D. A bound on chaos. J. High Energy Phys. 2016, 106 (2016).
Leviatan, E., Pollmann, F., Bardarson, J. H., Huse, D. A. & Altman, E. Quantum thermalization dynamics with matrix-product states. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.08894 (2017).
White, C. D., Zaletel, M., Mong, R. S. K. & Refael, G. Quantum dynamics of thermalizing systems. Phys. Rev. B 97, 035127 (2018).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Altman, E. Many-body localization and quantum thermalization. Nature Phys 14, 979–983 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-018-0305-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-018-0305-7
- Springer Nature Limited
This article is cited by
-
Properties of many-body localization in quasi-disordered Haldane–Shastry model
Quantum Information Processing (2023)
-
Property of Many-Body Localization in Heisenberg Ising Chain Under Periodic Driving
International Journal of Theoretical Physics (2023)
-
Probing quantum information propagation with out-of-time-ordered correlators
Nature Physics (2022)
-
Observation of energy-resolved many-body localization
Nature Physics (2021)
-
The Behavior of Many-body Localization in the Periodically Driven Heisenberg XXX Model
International Journal of Theoretical Physics (2021)