Many body localization and thermalization in quantum statistical
  mechanics

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Abstract

We review some recent developments in the statistical mechanics of isolated quantum systems. We provide a brief introduction to quantum thermalization, paying particular attention to the `Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis' (ETH), and the resulting `single-eigenstate statistical mechanics'. We then focus on a class of systems which fail to quantum thermalize and whose eigenstates violate the ETH: These are the many-body Anderson localized systems; their long-time properties are not captured by the conventional ensembles of quantum statistical mechanics. These systems can locally remember forever information about their local initial conditions, and are thus of interest for possibilities of storing quantum information. We discuss key features of many-body localization (MBL), and review a phenomenology of the MBL phase. Single-eigenstate statistical mechanics within the MBL phase reveals dynamically-stable ordered phases, and phase transitions among them, that are invisible to equilibrium statistical mechanics and can occur at high energy and low spatial dimensionality where equilibrium ordering is forbidden.

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Is Open Access

Metal-insulator transition in a weakly interacting many-electron system with localized single-particle states

B. L. Altshuler, D M Basko, I Aleiner (2005)

We consider low-temperature behavior of weakly interacting electrons in disordered conductors in the regime when all single-particle eigenstates are localized by the quenched disorder. We prove that in the absence of coupling of the electrons to any external bath dc electrical conductivity exactly vanishes as long as the temperatute \(T\) does not exceed some finite value \(T_c\). At the same time, it can be also proven that at high enough \(T\) the conductivity is finite. These two statements imply that the system undergoes a finite temperature Metal-to-Insulator transition, which can be viewed as Anderson-like localization of many-body wave functions in the Fock space. Metallic and insulating states are not different from each other by any spatial or discrete symmetries. We formulate the effective Hamiltonian description of the system at low energies (of the order of the level spacing in the single-particle localization volume). In the metallic phase quantum Boltzmann equation is valid, allowing to find the kinetic coefficients. In the insulating phase, \(T