2017/06/30 by Marlon Brenes, Marcello Dalmonte, Markus Heyl +1 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.str-el #cond-mat.quant-gas #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.120.030601
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 030601 (2018) · 5Pages + appendices; V2: updated discussion in page 2, more numerical results, added references
arxiv created 2017/12/17 · arxiv updated 2018/01/24
We show how lattice gauge theories can display many-body localization dynamics in the absence of disorder. Our starting point is the observation that, for some generic translationally invariant states, Gauss law effectively induces a dynamics which can be described as a disorder average over gauge super-selection sectors. We carry out extensive exact simulations on the real-time dynamics of a lattice Schwinger model, describing the coupling between U(1) gauge fields and staggered fermions. Our results show how memory effects and slow entanglement growth are present in a broad regime of parameters - in particular, for sufficiently large interactions. These findings are immediately relevant to cold atoms and trapped ions experiments realizing dynamical gauge fields, and suggest a new and universal link between confinement and entanglement dynamics in the many-body localized phase of lattice models.