title: Interferometric probes of many-body localization.
abstract: We propose a method for detecting many-body localization (MBL) in disordered spin systems. The method involves pulsed coherent spin manipulations that probe the dephasing of a given spin due to its entanglement with a set of distant spins. It allows one to distinguish the MBL phase from a noninteracting localized phase and a delocalized phase. In particular, we show that for a properly chosen pulse sequence the MBL phase exhibits a characteristic power-law decay reflecting its slow growth of entanglement. We find that this power-law decay is robust with respect to thermal and disorder averaging, provide numerical simulations supporting our results, and discuss possible experimental realizations in solid-state and cold-atom systems.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Serbyn
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA and ITAMP, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Knap
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gopalakrishnan
authors.affiliation: Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 2Y5, Canada and Institute for Quantum Computing, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada.
authors.forename: Z
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Papić
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
authors.forename: N Y
authors.initials: NY
authors.lastname: Yao
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA and Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 2Y5, Canada and Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.
authors.forename: C R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Laumann
authors.affiliation: Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 2Y5, Canada and Institute for Quantum Computing, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada.
authors.forename: D A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Abanin
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
authors.forename: M D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Lukin
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
authors.forename: E A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Demler