Signature of Many-Body Localization of Phonons in Strongly Disordered Superlattices
Many-body localization (MBL) has attracted significant attention because of its immunity to thermalization, role in logarithmic entanglement entropy growth, and opportunities to reach exotic quantum orders. However, experimental realization of MBL in solid-state systems has remained challenging. Her...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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American Chemical Society (ACS)
2021
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/135567 |
| _version_ | 1826199306554572800 |
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| author | Nguyen, Thanh Andrejevic, Nina Po, Hoi Chun Song, Qichen Tsurimaki, Yoichiro Drucker, Nathan C Alatas, Ahmet Alp, Esen E Leu, Bogdan M Cunsolo, Alessandro Cai, Yong Q Wu, Lijun Garlow, Joseph A Zhu, Yimei Lu, Hong Gossard, Arthur C Puretzky, Alexander A Geohegan, David B Huang, Shengxi Li, Mingda |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering Nguyen, Thanh Andrejevic, Nina Po, Hoi Chun Song, Qichen Tsurimaki, Yoichiro Drucker, Nathan C Alatas, Ahmet Alp, Esen E Leu, Bogdan M Cunsolo, Alessandro Cai, Yong Q Wu, Lijun Garlow, Joseph A Zhu, Yimei Lu, Hong Gossard, Arthur C Puretzky, Alexander A Geohegan, David B Huang, Shengxi Li, Mingda |
| author_sort | Nguyen, Thanh |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Many-body localization (MBL) has attracted significant attention because of its immunity to thermalization, role in logarithmic entanglement entropy growth, and opportunities to reach exotic quantum orders. However, experimental realization of MBL in solid-state systems has remained challenging. Here, we report evidence of a possible phonon MBL phase in disordered GaAs/AlAs superlattices. Through grazing-incidence inelastic X-ray scattering, we observe a strong deviation of the phonon population from equilibrium in samples doped with ErAs nanodots at low temperature, signaling a departure from thermalization. This behavior occurs within finite phonon energy and wavevector windows, suggesting a localization-thermalization crossover. We support our observation by proposing a theoretical model for the effective phonon Hamiltonian in disordered superlattices, and showing that it can be mapped exactly to a disordered 1D Bose-Hubbard model with a known MBL phase. Our work provides momentum-resolved experimental evidence of phonon localization, extending the scope of MBL to disordered solid-state systems. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:18:03Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/135567 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:18:03Z |
| publishDate | 2021 |
| publisher | American Chemical Society (ACS) |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1355672023-09-15T18:40:04Z Signature of Many-Body Localization of Phonons in Strongly Disordered Superlattices Nguyen, Thanh Andrejevic, Nina Po, Hoi Chun Song, Qichen Tsurimaki, Yoichiro Drucker, Nathan C Alatas, Ahmet Alp, Esen E Leu, Bogdan M Cunsolo, Alessandro Cai, Yong Q Wu, Lijun Garlow, Joseph A Zhu, Yimei Lu, Hong Gossard, Arthur C Puretzky, Alexander A Geohegan, David B Huang, Shengxi Li, Mingda Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering Many-body localization (MBL) has attracted significant attention because of its immunity to thermalization, role in logarithmic entanglement entropy growth, and opportunities to reach exotic quantum orders. However, experimental realization of MBL in solid-state systems has remained challenging. Here, we report evidence of a possible phonon MBL phase in disordered GaAs/AlAs superlattices. Through grazing-incidence inelastic X-ray scattering, we observe a strong deviation of the phonon population from equilibrium in samples doped with ErAs nanodots at low temperature, signaling a departure from thermalization. This behavior occurs within finite phonon energy and wavevector windows, suggesting a localization-thermalization crossover. We support our observation by proposing a theoretical model for the effective phonon Hamiltonian in disordered superlattices, and showing that it can be mapped exactly to a disordered 1D Bose-Hubbard model with a known MBL phase. Our work provides momentum-resolved experimental evidence of phonon localization, extending the scope of MBL to disordered solid-state systems. 2021-10-27T20:24:03Z 2021-10-27T20:24:03Z 2021-09-08 2021-08-11T17:09:33Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/135567 en 10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c01905 Nano Letters Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf American Chemical Society (ACS) arXiv |
| spellingShingle | Nguyen, Thanh Andrejevic, Nina Po, Hoi Chun Song, Qichen Tsurimaki, Yoichiro Drucker, Nathan C Alatas, Ahmet Alp, Esen E Leu, Bogdan M Cunsolo, Alessandro Cai, Yong Q Wu, Lijun Garlow, Joseph A Zhu, Yimei Lu, Hong Gossard, Arthur C Puretzky, Alexander A Geohegan, David B Huang, Shengxi Li, Mingda Signature of Many-Body Localization of Phonons in Strongly Disordered Superlattices |
| title | Signature of Many-Body Localization of Phonons in Strongly Disordered Superlattices |
| title_full | Signature of Many-Body Localization of Phonons in Strongly Disordered Superlattices |
| title_fullStr | Signature of Many-Body Localization of Phonons in Strongly Disordered Superlattices |
| title_full_unstemmed | Signature of Many-Body Localization of Phonons in Strongly Disordered Superlattices |
| title_short | Signature of Many-Body Localization of Phonons in Strongly Disordered Superlattices |
| title_sort | signature of many body localization of phonons in strongly disordered superlattices |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/135567 |
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