Many-Body Localization Through the Lens of Ultracold Quantum Gases
Pranjal Bordia, Max Planck Institute, Munich
A fundamental assumption of quantum statistical mechanics is that closed isolated systems always thermalize under their own dynamics. Progress on the topic of many-body localization has challenged this vital assumption, describing a phase where thermalization, and with it, equilibrium thermodynamics, breaks down. In this talk, I will describe how we can realize such a phase of matter with ultracold fermions in both driven and undriven optical lattices, with a focus on the relevance of realistic experimental platforms. Furthermore, I will describe new results on the observation of a regime exhibiting extremely slow scrambling, even for "infinite-temperature states". Our results demonstrate how controlled quantum simulators can explore fundamental questions about quantum statistical mechanics in genuinely novel regimes, often not accessible to state-of-the-art classical computations.