Physics (Internal)

Many-body Anderson localization and quantum thermalization

This event is part of the Physics Department Colloquia Series.

A system of many interacting and excited degrees of freedom isolated from its environment needs to be its own bath if it is to thermalize (thermalization means the system goes to thermal equilibrium at long times under its own dynamics). Most such systems do thermalize, but there are some model systems that are many-body Anderson localized so fail to be a bath for themselves and thus do not thermalize. And there is a poorly understood dynamic quantum phase transition between the many-body localized phase and the thermalizing phase. I will review some of our present understanding of these issues, including pointing out various questions that remain unanswered about these topics.