Title:Many-body localization, quantum heat baths, thermal equilibration and heat transport
Abstract:As first argued by Anderson (1958) and more recently and thoroughly by Basko, Aleiner and Altshuler, a quantum system of many degrees of freedom with quenched randomness may be localized and fail to thermally equilibrate. There can be a dynamic phase transition, a "mobility edge", as one varies the parameters and/or the energy density of the system, between the ergodic phase where the system can serve as its own heat bath and does equilibrate, and the many-body localized phase where it does not. I will attempt to precisely define what these words mean, and report on our attempts to investigate the nature of this phase transition.