Activating many-body localization in solids by driving with light

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that light irradiation can reveal many-body localization in disordered solids by inducing measurable temperature variations, overcoming phonon-induced decay of localization signatures.

Contribution

It introduces a method to detect many-body localization in solids through light-driven temperature variations, providing a new experimental probe for MBL phases.

Findings

Light irradiation causes significant temperature variations in MBL phases.

Temperature variations serve as an order parameter for MBL detection.

The method distinguishes MBL from ergodic phases under weak light irradiation.

Abstract

Due to the presence of phonons, many body localization (MBL) does not occur in disordered solids, even if disorder is strong. Local conservation laws characterizing an underlying MBL phase decay due to the coupling to phonons. Here we show that this decay can be compensated when the system is driven out of equilibrium. The resulting variations of the local temperature provide characteristic fingerprints of an underlying MBL phase. We consider a one-dimensional disordered spin-chain which is weakly coupled to a phonon bath and weakly irradiated by white light. The irradiation has weak effects in the ergodic phase. However, if the system is in the MBL phase irradiation induces strong temperature variations of order 1 despite the coupling to phonons. Temperature variations can be used similar to an order parameter to detect MBL phases, the phase transition and an MBL correlation length.