Events at Physics |
Events on Wednesday, February 11th, 2015
- R. G. Herb Condensed Matter Seminar
- Faculty Candidate Seminar
- Dynamical signatures and applications of many-body localization
- Time: 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
- Place: 4274 Chamberlin
- Speaker: Sarang Gopalakrishnan, Harvard University
- Abstract: The many-body localization (MBL) transition in isolated quantum systems is
a transition at which equilibrium statistical mechanics breaks down; the
resulting localized phase has extensively many local conserved quantities
and acts as a quantum memory. In this talk, I consider experimentally
feasible probes of the MBL phase, such as a.c. conductivity, polarization
decay, and the response to spin echo protocols, and show that these probes
give clear signatures of MBL that distinguish it from single-particle
localization, even in realistic systems that are only imperfectly isolated
from the environment. I then turn to the regime near the MBL transition,
and show that low-frequency response in this regime exhibits is dominated
by rare-region effects, which can be described using "Griffiths"
arguments. Finally, I comment on how the absence of intrinsic decoherence
in the localized phase can be used as a resource for quantum information
science. - Host: Coppersmith