Marcello Dalmonte from ICTP, Italy speaks about "Atomic lattice gauge theories: realisations and non-ergodic dynamics"
Abstract: Gauge theories are the back-bone of our understanding of nature at the most fundamental level as captured by the standard model. In addition, they serve as an invaluable tool to capture basic phenomena in condensed matter theory, in particular in the field of static properties of strongly correlated systems. In this talk, I will describe recent attempts aimed at realising lattice gauge theory dynamics in synthetic quantum matter. The two main motivations behind this research line are to realize quantum simulator for strongly coupled gauge theories, and the opportunity to build table-top experiments to investigate new (out-of-equilibrium) phenomena.
After a quick review, I will describe recent experiments that realised the lattice Schwinger model (QED in (1+1)-d) in the presence of a finite topological angle at the boundary of classical computational methods, and discuss how similar approaches can be extended to Yang-Mills SU(2)xU(1) theories in (1+1)-d. Based on these findings, I will discuss how low-dimensional gauge theories offer a unique playground to investigate ergodicity breaking leveraging on quantum field theory tools, by providing (a) a simple interpretation of weak-ergodicity breaking utilising gauge theories, with immediate extensions beyond D=1 utilising N=2 supersymmetry, and (b) a new framework to investigate many-body localisation where interactions and disorder cooperate rather than compete, leading to exotic quantum information dynamics.
