TY - JOUR
T1 - Localized systems coupled to small baths
T2 - From Anderson to Zeno
AU - Huse, David A.
AU - Nandkishore, Rahul
AU - Pietracaprina, Francesca
AU - Ros, Valentina
AU - Scardicchio, Antonello
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 American Physical Society.
PY - 2015/7/8
Y1 - 2015/7/8
N2 - We investigate what happens if an Anderson localized system is coupled to a small bath, with a discrete spectrum, when the coupling between system and bath is specially chosen so as to never localize the bath. We find that the effect of the bath on localization in the system is a nonmonotonic function of the coupling between system and bath. At weak couplings, the bath facilitates transport by allowing the system to "borrow" energy from the bath. But, above a certain coupling the bath produces localization because of an orthogonality catastrophe, whereby the bath "dresses" the system and hence suppresses the hopping matrix element. We call this last regime the regime of "Zeno localization" since the physics of this regime is akin to the quantum Zeno effect, where frequent measurements of the position of a particle impede its motion. We confirm our results by numerical exact diagonalization.
AB - We investigate what happens if an Anderson localized system is coupled to a small bath, with a discrete spectrum, when the coupling between system and bath is specially chosen so as to never localize the bath. We find that the effect of the bath on localization in the system is a nonmonotonic function of the coupling between system and bath. At weak couplings, the bath facilitates transport by allowing the system to "borrow" energy from the bath. But, above a certain coupling the bath produces localization because of an orthogonality catastrophe, whereby the bath "dresses" the system and hence suppresses the hopping matrix element. We call this last regime the regime of "Zeno localization" since the physics of this regime is akin to the quantum Zeno effect, where frequent measurements of the position of a particle impede its motion. We confirm our results by numerical exact diagonalization.
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U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevB.92.014203
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevB.92.014203
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84937959793
SN - 1098-0121
VL - 92
JO - Physical Review B-Condensed Matter
JF - Physical Review B-Condensed Matter
IS - 1
M1 - 014203
ER -