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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Disorder-controlled relaxation in a three-dimensional Hubbard model quantum simulator

W. Morong1,*, S. R. Muleady2,3, I. Kimchi2,3,†, W. Xu1,‡, R. M. Nandkishore3,4, A. M. Rey2,3, and B. DeMarco1,§

  • 1Department of Physics, IQUIST, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA
  • 2JILA, National Institute of Standards and Technology and Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA
  • 3Center for Theory of Quantum Matter, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA
  • 4Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA

  • *Present address: Joint Quantum Institute and Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science, University of Maryland and NIST, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA.
  • †Present address: School of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA.
  • ‡Present address: Department of Physics and Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
  • §Corresponding author: bdemarco@illinois.edu
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Phys. Rev. Research 3, L012009 – Published 27 January, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.3.L012009

Abstract

Understanding the collective behavior of strongly correlated electrons in materials remains a central problem in many-particle quantum physics. A minimal description of these systems is provided by the disordered Fermi-Hubbard model (DFHM), which incorporates the interplay of motion in a disordered lattice with local interparticle interactions. Despite its minimal elements, many dynamical properties of the DFHM are not well understood, owing to the complexity of systems combining out-of-equilibrium behavior, interactions, and disorder in higher spatial dimensions. Here, we study the relaxation dynamics of doubly occupied lattice sites in the three-dimensional DFHM using interaction-quench measurements on a quantum simulator composed of fermionic atoms confined in an optical lattice. In addition to observing the widely studied effect of disorder inhibiting relaxation, we find that the cooperation between strong interactions and disorder also leads to the emergence of a dynamical regime characterized by disorder-enhanced relaxation. To support these results, we develop an approximate numerical method and a phenomenological model that each capture the essential physics of the decay dynamics. Our results provide a theoretical framework for a previously inaccessible regime of the DFHM and demonstrate the ability of quantum simulators to enable understanding of complex many-body systems through minimal models.

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Phys. Rev. Research 3, L012009– Published 27 January, 2021
  • Received 26 June 2020
  • Accepted 23 December 2020
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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