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Periodically driving a many-body localized quantum system

Nature Physics volume 13, pages 460–464 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Periodically driven quantum many-body systems can display rich dynamics and host exotic phases that are absent in their undriven counterparts. However, in the presence of interactions such systems are expected to eventually heat up to a simple infinite-temperature state. One possible exception is a periodically driven many-body localized system, in which heating is precluded by strong disorder. Here, we use a gas of ultracold fermionic potassium atoms in optical lattices to prepare and probe such a driven system and show that it is indeed stable for high enough driving frequency. Moreover, we find a novel regime in which the system is exceedingly stable even at low drive frequencies, a particular feature of our driving scheme. Our experimental findings are well supported by numerical simulations and may provide avenues for engineering novel phases in periodically driven matter.

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Figure 1: Schematic of the experiment and the dynamical phase diagram.
Figure 2: Evolution of the imbalance under periodic modulation.
Figure 3: Dynamical phase diagram.
Figure 4: Frequency and amplitude dependence of the asymptotic imbalance.

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Acknowledgements

We thank E. Altman, E. Demler, S. Gopalakrishnan and S. Hodgman for many useful discussions. We acknowledge support from Technical University of Munich - Institute for Advanced Study, funded by the German Excellence Initiative and the European Union FP7 under grant agreement 291763, from the DFG grant no. KN 1254/1-1, the European Commission (UQUAM, AQuS) and the Nanosystems Initiative Munich (NIM).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fakultät für Physik, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Schellingstr. 4, 80799 Munich, Germany

    Pranjal Bordia, Henrik Lüschen, Ulrich Schneider & Immanuel Bloch

  2. Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, Hans-Kopfermann-Str. 1, 85748 Garching, Germany

    Pranjal Bordia, Henrik Lüschen, Ulrich Schneider & Immanuel Bloch

  3. Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, J.J. Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0HE, UK

    Ulrich Schneider

  4. Department of Physics, Walter Schottky Institute, and Institute for Advanced Study, Technical University of Munich, 85748 Garching, Germany

    Michael Knap

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  1. Pranjal Bordia
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Contributions

P.B. and H.L. conceived and performed the experiments. M.K. carried out the numerical simulations. U.S., M.K. and I.B. supervised the work. All authors contributed critically to the writing of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Immanuel Bloch.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Bordia, P., Lüschen, H., Schneider, U. et al. Periodically driving a many-body localized quantum system. Nature Phys 13, 460–464 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys4020

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