paper

Describing many-body localized systems in thermal environments

arXiv:1811.06000 · doi:10.1088/1367-2630/ab25a4

Abstract

In this work we formulate an efficient method for the description of many-body localized systems in weak contact with thermal environments at temperature . For this purpose we exploit the representation of the system in terms of quasi-local integrals of motion (-bits) to derive a quantum master equation using Born-Markov approximations. We show how this equation can be treated by using quantum-jump Monte-Carlo techniques as well as by deriving approximate kinetic equations of motion. As an example, we consider the one-dimensional Anderson model for spinless fermions including also nearest-neighbor interactions, which we diagonalize approximately by employing a recently proposed method valid in the limit of strong disorder and weak interactions. Coupling the system to a global thermal bath, we study the transport between two leads with different chemical potentials at both of its ends. We find that the temperature-dependent current is captured by an interaction-dependent version of Mott's law for variable range hopping, where transport is enhanced/lowered depending on whether the interactions are attractive or repulsive, respectively. We interpret these results in terms of spatio-energetic correlations between the -bits.

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