Frustration induced quasi-many-body localization without disorder

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that frustration alone can induce quasi-many-body localization in a disorder-free quantum spin chain, offering new ways to preserve quantum coherence and manipulate localized eigenstates.

Contribution

It introduces a disorder-free frustrated spin chain that exhibits quasi-MBL, showing localization signatures and potential for quantum information applications.

Findings

Localization signatures observed without disorder

Exponential lifetime growth with system size

Logarithmic entanglement growth and light cone

Abstract

Motivated by the question of whether disorder is a prerequisite for localization to occur in quantum many-body systems, we study a frustrated one-dimensional spin chain, which supports localized many-body eigenstates in the absence of disorder. When the system is prepared in an initial state with one domain wall, it exhibits characteristic signatures of quasi-many-body localization (quasi- MBL), including initial state memory retention, an exponentially increasing lifetime with enlarging the size of the system, a logarithmic growth of entanglement entropy, and a logarithmic light cone of an out-of-time-ordered correlator. We further show that the localized many-body eigenstates can be manipulated as pseudospin-1/2s and thus could potentially serve as qubits. Our findings suggest a new route of using frustration to access quasi-MBL and preserve quantum coherence.