Exploring Localization in Nuclear Spin Chains
Name
PhysRevLett.120.070501.pdf
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433.91 KB
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Author(s)
Ramanathan, Chandrasekhar
Wei, Xuan
Cappellaro, Paola
Date Issued
February 2018
Journal
Physical Review Letters
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
Wei, Ken Xuan et al. "Exploring Localization in Nuclear Spin Chains." Physical Review Letters 120, 7 (February 2018): 070501 © 2018 American Physical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Characterizing out-of-equilibrium many-body dynamics is a complex but crucial task for quantum applications and understanding fundamental phenomena. A central question is the role of localization in quenching thermalization in many-body systems and whether such localization survives in the presence of interactions. Probing this question in real systems necessitates the development of an experimentally measurable metric that can distinguish between different types of localization. While it is known that the localized phase of interacting systems [many-body localization (MBL)] exhibits a long-time logarithmic growth in entanglement entropy that distinguishes it from the noninteracting case of Anderson localization (AL), entanglement entropy is difficult to measure experimentally. Here, we present a novel correlation metric, capable of distinguishing MBL from AL in high-temperature spin systems. We demonstrate the use of this metric to detect localization in a natural solid-state spin system using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). We engineer the natural Hamiltonian to controllably introduce disorder and interactions, and observe the emergence of localization. In particular, while our correlation metric saturates for AL, it slowly keeps increasing for MBL, demonstrating analogous features to entanglement entropy, as we show in simulations. Our results show that our NMR techniques, akin to measuring out-of-time correlations, are well suited for studying localization in spin systems.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Laboratory for Nuclear Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.070501
