Localization persisting under aperiodic driving
Hongzheng Zhao, Florian Mintert, Johannes Knolle, Roderich Moessner
Abstract
Localization may survive in periodically driven (Floquet) quantum systems, but is generally unstable for aperiodic drives. In this Letter, we identify a hidden conservation law originating from a chiral symmetry in a disordered spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ XX chain. This protects indefinitely long-lived localization for general---even aperiodic---drives. Therefore, rather counterintuitively, adding further potential disorder which spoils the conservation law delocalizes the system, via a controllable parametrically long-lived prethermal regime. This provides an example of persistent single-particle ``localization without eigenstates.''
Topics & Concepts
Aperiodic graphFloquet theoryEigenvalues and eigenvectorsPhysicsSymmetry (geometry)Conservation lawQuantumStatistical physicsQuantum mechanicsTheoretical physicsMathematicsCombinatoricsGeometryNonlinear systemQuantum many-body systemsQuantum and electron transport phenomenaQuantum chaos and dynamical systems