Abstract
Localization due to the presence of disorder has proven crucial for our current understanding of relaxation in isolated quantum systems. The many-body localized phase constitutes a robust alternative to the thermalization of complex interacting systems, but recently the importance of disorder has been brought into question. Starting from translationally invariant $(1 + 1)$-dimensional quantum electrodynamics, we modify the dynamics of the gauge field and reveal a mechanism of disorder-free localization. We consider two different discretizations of the continuum model resulting in a free-fermion soluble model in one case and an interacting model in the other. We diagnose the localization in the far-from-equilibrium dynamics following a global quantum quench.
Highlights
Revealing the effect of disorder has been crucial for our understanding of how complex quantum systems can relax
The many-body localized phase constitutes a robust alternative to the thermalization of complex interacting systems, but recently the importance of disorder has been brought into question
Starting from translationally invariant (1 + 1)-dimensional quantum electrodynamics, we modify the dynamics of the gauge field which allows us to construct a lattice model with a U(1) local gauge symmetry revealing a mechanism of disorder-free localization
Summary
Revealing the effect of disorder has been crucial for our understanding of how complex quantum systems can relax. An alternative was demonstrated in a model related to a Z2 lattice gauge theory (LGT) [11], where the disorder-free localization mechanism emerged from the local gauge symmetry. The lattice model studied here with a U(1) gauge symmetry is constructed from a modification of the massless one-dimensional lattice Schwinger model of QED, using the Kogut-Susskind formulation of Staggered fermions [23] The latter is manifestly a model of long-range spin-spin interactions. We first consider the Staggered fermions discretization, which leads to a model of free-fermions with an emergent disorderfree localization mechanism. This solubility allows us to identify the localized behaviour and perform large scale numerical simulations. We close with a discussion of our results and an outlook
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