Localized systems coupled to small baths: From Anderson to Zeno

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 functi...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review. B, Condensed matter and materials physics Condensed matter and materials physics, 2015-07, Vol.92 (1), Article 014203
Main Authors: Huse, David A., Nandkishore, Rahul, Pietracaprina, Francesca, Ros, Valentina, Scardicchio, Antonello
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Condensed matter
Joining
Localization
Mathematical analysis
Mathematical models
Position (location)
Position measurement
Transport
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary: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.
ISSN:1098-0121
1550-235X
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevB.92.014203