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  • Letter

Disorder-free localization as a purely classical effect

Pablo Sala1,2,3,*, Giuliano Giudici4,5,†, and Jad C. Halimeh4,5,‡

  • 1Department of Physics and Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA
  • 2Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA
  • 3Department of Physics, Technische Universität München, James-Franck-Straße 1, D-85748 Garching, Germany
  • 4Department of Physics and Arnold Sommerfeld Center for Theoretical Physics (ASC), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Theresienstraße 37, D-80333 München, Germany
  • 5Munich Center for Quantum Science and Technology (MCQST), Schellingstraße 4, D-80799 München, Germany

  • *psala@caltech.edu
  • †giuliano.giudici@physik.uni-muenchen.de
  • ‡jad.halimeh@physik.lmu.de
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Phys. Rev. B 109, L060305 – Published 28 February, 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.109.L060305

Abstract

Disorder-free localization (DFL) is an ergodicity-breaking mechanism that has been shown to occur in lattice gauge theories in the quench dynamics of initial states spanning an extensive number of gauge superselection sectors. Whether this type of DFL is intrinsically a quantum interference effect or can arise classically has hitherto remained an open question whose resolution is pertinent to further understanding the far-from-equilibrium dynamics of gauge theories. In this work, we utilize cellular automaton circuits to model the quench dynamics of large-scale quantum link model (QLM) formulations of (1+1)D quantum electrodynamics, showing excellent agreement with the exact quantum case for small system sizes. Our results demonstrate that DFL persists in the thermodynamic limit as a purely classical effect arising from the finite-size regularization of the gauge-field operator in the QLM formulation, and that quantum interference, though not a necessary condition, may be employed to enhance DFL.

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Phys. Rev. B 109, L060305– Published 28 February, 2024
  • Received 22 March 2023
  • Revised 31 January 2024
  • Accepted 31 January 2024
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