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Many-body dynamical delocalization in a kicked one-dimensional ultracold gas

Nature Physics volume 18, pages 1297–1301 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Contrary to a driven classical system that exhibits chaotic behaviour and diffusive energy growth, a kicked quantum system can exhibit the emergence of dynamical localization, which limits energy absorption and leads to the breakdown of ergodicity1,2,3,4. The evolution of dynamically localized states in the presence of many-body interactions has long remained an open question5,6,7. Here we experimentally study an interacting one-dimensional ultracold gas periodically kicked by a pulsed optical lattice and observe the interaction-driven emergence of dynamical delocalization and many-body quantum chaos. The observed dynamics feature sub-diffusive energy growth over a broad parameter range of interaction and kick strengths. These results shed light on interaction-driven transport phenomena in quantum many-body systems, in a regime where theoretical approaches are extremely challenging and provide conflicting predictions.

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Fig. 1: Experimentally realizing the interacting 1D QKR system.
Fig. 2: Momentum and energy evolution for dynamically localized and delocalized rotors.
Fig. 3: Tuning the onset of many-body quantum chaos with interaction and kick strengths.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available via the Harvard Dataverse at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/9WLJXE. Any additional information is available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

Code availability

The computer codes used for theoretical calculations in this study are available from C.Z. upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank D. Weld, A. Rançon and V. Galitski for helpful discussions. Work at the University of Washington is supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA9550-19-1-0012) and the National Science Foundation (PHY-1806212). K.C.M. is supported by an IC postdoctoral fellowship. The work at the University of Texas at Dallas is supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA9550-20-1-0220), National Science Foundation (PHY-1806227 and PHY-2110212) and Army Research Office (W911NF-17-1-0128).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Jun Hui See Toh, Katherine C. McCormick, Xinxin Tang & Subhadeep Gupta

  2. Department of Physics, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA

    Ying Su, Xi-Wang Luo & Chuanwei Zhang

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Contributions

J.H.S.T., K.C.M. and X.T. performed the experimental measurements and data analysis. S.G. conceived the experiment and supervised the work. Y.S. and X.-W.L. performed the GP and HFB numerical simulations. C.Z. supervised the theoretical work. All the authors contributed to the preparation of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Chuanwei Zhang or Subhadeep Gupta.

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Nature Physics thanks Jakub Zakrzewski and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–10, Table 1 and Discussion.

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See Toh, J.H., McCormick, K.C., Tang, X. et al. Many-body dynamical delocalization in a kicked one-dimensional ultracold gas. Nat. Phys. 18, 1297–1301 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01721-w

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