Müller, Markus

Date:  Tuesday, September 19, 2017
Time:  13:00
Place:  ETH Zurich, Hönggerberg, HPF G 6
Host:   Atac Imamoglu

Many body localization without quenched disorder?

Markus Müller
PSI

We explore the possibility that translationally invariant quantum many body systems might undergo a transition to a localized phase where ergodicity and translational invariance break down spontaneously. This phenomenon can be regarded as an interaction-induced many-body localization on configurational (or self-generated) disorder - a quantum analogue of ideal glasses in classical statistical mechanics.

I will argue that such quantum glasses can indeed be stable to perturbative quantum fluctuations. This opens the interesting possibility of non-ergodic behavior on very long time scales, without having to introduce quenched disorder. Finally, I will discuss caveats due to rare, non-perturbative effects, which are believed to reinstate ergodicity on large time and length scales. Those also have interesting implications on the possible phase diagrams of systems that localize with quenched disorder.