2016/04/14 by Jae-yoon Choi, Sebastian Hild, Johannes Zeiher +7 · 1 voice · 7 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.quant-gas #cond-mat.stat-mech #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1126/science.aaf8834
published as Science 352, 1547 (2016) · 10 pages and 9 figures
One fundamental assumption in statistical physics is that generic closed quantum many-body systems thermalize under their own dynamics. Recently, the emergence of many-body localized systems has questioned this concept, challenging our understanding of the connection between statistical physics and quantum mechanics. Here we report on the observation of a many-body localization transition between thermal and localized phases for bosons in a two-dimensional disordered optical lattice. With our single site resolved measurements we track the relaxation dynamics of an initially prepared out-of-equilibrium density pattern and find strong evidence for a diverging length scale when approaching the localization transition. Our experiments mark the first demonstration and in-depth characterization of many-body localization in a regime not accessible with state-of-the-art simulations on classical computers.