Events at Physics |
Many body localization occurs in isolated quantum systems, usually with strong disorder, and is marked by absence of dissipation, absence of thermal equilibration, a strictly zero DC conductivity (even at energy densities corresponding to high temperatures), and a memory of the initial conditions that survives in local observables for arbitrarily long times. Recently, my co-workers and I have demonstrated that many body localization also opens the door to new states of matter which cannot exist in thermal equilibrium, such as topological order at finite energy density, or broken symmetry states below the equilibrium lower critical dimension. In this talk, I review the essential features of the many body localization phenomenon, present our recent work on localization protected order, and provide a survey of open problems. I also present my ongoing work seeking to make contact between the theory and experiments, and discuss potential technological applications of these ideas.“