3:45 pm GCIS W301/W303
Non-Equilibrium Dynamics Through the Prism of Quantum Entanglement
Dmitry Abanin
Perimeter Institute, University of Geneva
Remarkable experimental advances of the past decade have opened the door to probing highly non-equilibrium dynamics of quantum many-body systems. When an interacting system is prepared in a non-equilibrium state, its evolution often leads to an effective thermal equilibrium. However, as was recently demonstrated theoretical and experimentally, that there are quantum phases of matter which do not thermalize, and therefore cannot be described by statistical mechanics. In this talk, I will describe how using insights from quantum entanglement of many-body states enabled progress in understanding such phases. I will focus on three distinct mechanisms to avoid thermalization: many-body localization (MBL), the recently discovered quantum many-body scars, and frustrated glassy spin systems. Non-thermalization protects quantum coherence, leading to a wealth of new dynamical phenomena and opening attractive opportunities for controlling quantum matter.