Single spin probe of many-body localization

Article

关键词: DECOHERENCE;    ENVIRONMENT;    TRANSITION;    SYSTEM;   

DOI  :  10.1103/PhysRevB.94.180202

来源: SCIE

【 摘 要 】

We use an external spin as a dynamical probe of many-body localization. The probe spin is coupled to an interacting and disordered environment described by a Heisenberg spin chain in a random field. The spin-chain environment can be tuned between a thermalizing delocalized phase and nonthermalizing localized phase, both in its ground and high-energy states. We study the decoherence of the probe spin when it couples to the environment prepared in three states: the ground state, the infinite temperature state, and a high-energy Neel state. In the nonthermalizing many-body localized regime, the coherence shows scaling behavior in the disorder strength. The long-time dynamics of the probe spin shows a logarithmic dephasing in analogy with the logarithmic growth of entanglement entropy for a bipartition of a many-body localized system. In summary, we show that decoherence of the probe spin provides clear signatures of many-body localization.

【 授权许可】

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