Spin-charge separation and many-body localization

We study many-body localization for a disordered chain of spin 1/2 fermions. In [Phys. Rev. B \textbf{94}, 241104 (2016)], when both down and up components are exposed to the same strong disorder, the authors observe a power law growth of the entanglement entropy that suggests that many-body localization is not complete; the density (charge) degree of freedom is localized, while the spin degree of freedom is apparently delocalized. We show that this power-like behavior is only a transient effect and that, for longer times, the growth is logarithmic in time suggesting that the spin degree of freedom is also localized, so that the system follows the standard many-body localization scenario. We also study the experimentally relevant case of quasiperiodic disorder.Comment: version accepted in PR

Breakdown of adiabaticity when loading ultra-cold atoms in optical lattices

Realistic simulations of current ultra-cold atoms experiments in optical lattices show that the ramping up of the optical lattice is significantly nonadiabatic, implying that experimentally prepared Mott insulators are not really in the ground state of the atomic system. The nonadiabaticity is even larger in the presence of a secondary quasi-periodic lattice simulating "disorder". Alternative ramping schemes are suggested that improve the adiabaticity when the disorder is not too large.Comment: 4pp, 3 fig

Proper phase imprinting method for a dark soliton excitation in a superfluid Fermi mixture

It is common knowledge that a dark soliton can be excited in an ultra-cold atomic gas by means of the phase imprinting method. We show that, for a superfluid fermionic mixture, the standard phase imprinting procedure applied to both components fails to create a state with symmetry properties identical to those of the dark soliton solution of the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations. To produce a dark soliton in the BCS regime, a single component of the Fermi mixture should be phase imprinted only.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. A Rapid Communication

Many-body Matter-wave Dark Soliton

The Gross-Pitaevskii equation - which describes interacting bosons in the mean-field approximation - possesses solitonic solutions in dimension one. For repulsively interacting particles, the stationary soliton is dark, i.e. is represented by a local density minimum. Many-body effects may lead to filling of the dark soliton. Using quasi-exact many-body simulations, we show that, in single realizations, the soliton appears totally dark although the single particle density tends to be uniform.Comment: 4-5 pages, 4 figures, version accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter

Disorder and interference: localization phenomena

The specific problem we address in these lectures is the problem of transport and localization in disordered systems, when interference is present, as characteristic for waves, with a focus on realizations with ultracold atoms.Comment: Notes of a lecture delivered at the Les Houches School of Physics on "Ultracold gases and quantum information" 2009 in Singapore. v3: corrected mistakes, improved script for numerics, Chapter 9 in "Les Houches 2009 - Session XCI: Ultracold Gases and Quantum Information" edited by C. Miniatura et al. (Oxford University Press, 2011

Many-body localization due to random interactions

The possibility of observing many body localization of ultracold atoms in a one dimensional optical lattice is discussed for random interactions. In the non-interacting limit, such a system reduces to single-particle physics in the absence of disorder, i.e. to extended states. In effect the observed localization is inherently due to interactions and is thus a genuine many-body effect. In the system studied, many-body localization manifests itself in a lack of thermalization visible in temporal propagation of a specially prepared initial state, in transport properties, in the logarithmic growth of entanglement entropy as well as in statistical properties of energy levels.Comment: 5pp, 4figs. version close to published on