2025/10/13 by Ben T. McDonough, Marius Lemm, McDonough, Ben T. +4 · 1 voice · 1 citation
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn) #FOS: Physical sciences #Mathematical Physics (math-ph) #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #Quantum optics and atomic interactions #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.stat-mech #math-ph #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2510.11831
openalex publication_date 2025/10/13 · arxiv published 2025/10/13 · arxiv updated 2025/10/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/17 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Strong disorder often has drastic consequences for quantum dynamics. This is best illustrated by the phenomenon of Anderson localization in non-interacting systems, where destructive quantum wave interference leads to the complete absence of particle and information transport over macroscopic distances. In this work, we investigate the extent to which strong disorder leads to provably slow dynamics in many-body quantum lattice models. We show that in any spatial dimension, strong disorder leads to a non-perturbatively small velocity for ballistic information transport under unitary quantum dynamics, almost surely in the thermodynamic limit, in every many-body state. In these models, we also prove the existence of a "prethermal many-body localized regime", where entanglement spreads logarithmically slowly, up to non-perturbatively long time scales. More generally, these conclusions hold for all models corresponding to quantum perturbations to a classical Hamiltonian obeying a simple non-resonant condition. Deterministic non-resonant models are found, including spin systems in strong incommensurate lattice potentials. Consequently, quantum dynamics in non-resonant potentials is asymptotically easier to simulate on both classical or quantum computers, compared to a generic many-body system.