Glassy quantum dynamics in translation invariant fracton models

Abhinav Prem, Jeongwan Haah, and Rahul Nandkishore
Phys. Rev. B 95, 155133 – Published 19 April 2017

Abstract

We investigate relaxation in the recently discovered “fracton” models and discover that these models naturally host glassy quantum dynamics in the absence of quenched disorder. We begin with a discussion of “type I” fracton models, in the taxonomy of Vijay, Haah, and Fu. We demonstrate that in these systems, the mobility of charges is suppressed exponentially in the inverse temperature. We further demonstrate that when a zero-temperature type I fracton model is placed in contact with a finite-temperature heat bath, the approach to equilibrium is a logarithmic function of time over an exponentially wide window of time scales. Generalizing to the more complex “type II” fracton models, we find that the charges exhibit subdiffusion up to a relaxation time that diverges at low temperatures as a superexponential function of inverse temperature. This behavior is reminiscent of “nearly localized” disordered systems, but occurs with a translation invariant three-dimensional Hamiltonian. We also conjecture that fracton models with conserved charge may support a phase which is a thermal metal but a charge insulator.

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  • Received 15 February 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.95.155133

©2017 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied PhysicsQuantum Information, Science & TechnologyStatistical Physics & Thermodynamics

Authors & Affiliations

Abhinav Prem1,*, Jeongwan Haah2, and Rahul Nandkishore1

  • 1Department of Physics and Center for Theory of Quantum Matter, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA
  • 2Station Q Quantum Architectures and Computation Group, Microsoft Research, Redmond, Washington, USA

  • *abhinav.prem@colorado.edu

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Issue

Vol. 95, Iss. 15 — 15 April 2017

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