Many-body localization: from electronic transport to quantum computation, a new perspective on the foundations of statistical mechanics

by Antonello Scardicchio (The Abdus Salam ICTP, Trieste and INFN, Sezione di Trieste)

Thursday 23 Apr 2015, 14:25 → 15:25 Europe/Rome

Aula Rasetti (Dip. di Fisica - Edificio G. Marconi)

I will review some recent developments in the theory of interacting electrons in disordered potentials, which fall under the name of "many-body localization". This phenomenon, fleshed out in 2006 and currently under study, is now understood to be the paradigm for understanding weak-interacting electrons in disordered backgrounds, spin-chains and quantum annealers and it has been observed in cold atoms experiments. Its ubiquity is justified by the fact that, ! fundamentally, we are discussing the validity (and breakdown) of the ergodic hypothesis in quantum statistical mechanics.