title: Robustness of Many-Body Localization in the Presence of Dissipation.
abstract: Many-body localization (MBL) has emerged as a novel paradigm for robust ergodicity breaking in closed quantum many-body systems. However, it is not yet clear to which extent MBL survives in the presence of dissipative processes induced by the coupling to an environment. Here we study heating and ergodicity for a paradigmatic MBL system-an interacting fermionic chain subject to quenched disorder-in the presence of dephasing. We find that, even though the system is eventually driven into an infinite-temperature state, heating as monitored by the von Neumann entropy can progress logarithmically slowly, implying exponentially large time scales for relaxation. This slow loss of memory of initial conditions makes signatures of nonergodicity visible over a long, but transient, time regime. We point out a potential controlled realization of the considered setup with cold atomic gases held in optical lattices.
authors.affiliation: School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Emanuele
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Levi
authors.affiliation: Physik Department, Technische Universität München, 85747 Garching, Germany.
authors.forename: Markus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Heyl
authors.affiliation: School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Igor
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Lesanovsky
authors.affiliation: School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Juan P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Garrahan