2019/02/28 by Shane P. Kelly, Rahul Nandkishore, Jamir Marino · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.dis-nn
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.nuclphysb.2019.114886
published as Nucl. Phys. B 951, 114886 (2020) · 22 pages, 7 figures
arxiv created 2019/10/09 · arxiv updated 2020/01/16
Inspired by recent experiments on many-body localized systems coupled to an environment, we apply a Flow Equation method to study the problem of a disorder chain of spinless fermions, coupled via density-density interactions to a second clean chain of spinless fermions. In particular, we focus on the conditions for the onset of a many-body localized phase in the clean sector of our model by proximity to the dirty one. We find that a many-body localization proximity effect in the clean component is established when the density of dirty fermions exceeds a threshold value. From the flow equation method we find that, similar to many-body localization in a single chain, the many-body localization proximity effect is also described by an extensive set of local integrals of motion. Furthermore, by tuning the geometry of the inter-chain couplings, we show that the dynamics of the model is ruled, on intermediate time scales, by an emergent set of quasi-conserved charges.