Phys. Rev. X (in the press); preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/1705.06290
Sometimes, even physicists succumb to folklore. This typically arises when plausible, sometimes even rigorous arguments are widely understood to mean a particular phenomenon cannot arise under certain conditions. The 'impossibility' of isolating two-dimensional sheets of carbon is a prime example from the pre-graphene days.
A similar folk theorem seems to have taken hold in the study of the non-equilibrium quantum dynamics of many-body systems, the phenomenon known as many-body localization (MBL): based on perturbative arguments, it is generally thought that MBL is only possible in systems with short-range interactions.
Now, Rahul Nandkishore and Shivaji Sondhi have put forward a set of non-perturbative arguments to show that MBL can also arise with long-range interactions. The key idea is that they can drive the system into a non-trivial correlated phase, which is naturally described in terms of emergent degrees of freedom with only short-range interactions. The arguments are most rigorous in one dimension, but can be extended to two and three dimensions as well. MBL may therefore be more widespread than previously thought.
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Taroni, A. Going long. Nature Phys 13, 1037 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys4317
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys4317