Choi, Jae-yoon; Hild, Sebastian; Zeiher, Johannes; Schauß, Peter; Rubio-Abadal, Antonio; Yefsah, Tarik; Khemani, Vedika; Huse, David A.; Bloch, Immanuel; Gross, Christian Exploring the many-body localization transition in two dimensions. (English) Zbl 1355.81164 Science 352, No. 6293, 1547-1552 (2016). Summary: A fundamental assumption in statistical physics is that generic closed quantum many-body systems thermalize under their own dynamics. Recently, the emergence of many-body localized systems has questioned this concept and challenged our understanding of the connection between statistical physics and quantum mechanics. Here we report on the observation of a many-body localization transition between thermal and localized phases for bosons in a two-dimensional disordered optical lattice. With our single-site-resolved measurements, we track the relaxation dynamics of an initially prepared out-of-equilibrium density pattern and find strong evidence for a diverging length scale when approaching the localization transition. Our experiments represent a demonstration and in-depth characterization of many-body localization in a regime not accessible with state-of-the-art simulations on classical computers. Cited in 1 ReviewCited in 28 Documents MSC: 81V19 Other fundamental interactions in quantum theory PDFBibTeX XMLCite \textit{J.-y. Choi} et al., Science 352, No. 6293, 1547--1552 (2016; Zbl 1355.81164) Full Text: DOI arXiv