Slow dynamics of a mobile impurity interacting with an Anderson insulator

We investigate dynamics of a single mobile impurity immersed in a bath of Anderson localized particles and focus on the regime of relatively strong disorder and interactions. In that regime, the dynamics of the system is particularly slow, suggesting, at short times, an occurrence of many-body localization. Considering longer timescales, we show that the latter is a transient effect and that, eventually, the impurity spreads subdiffusively and induces a gradual delocalization of the Anderson insulator. The phenomenology of the system in the considered regime of slow dynamics includes a subdiffusive growth of mean square displacement of the impurity, power-law decay of density correlation functions of the Anderson insulator, and a power-law growth of entanglement entropy in the system. We observe a similar regime of slow dynamics also when the disorder in the system is replaced by a sufficiently strong quasiperiodic potential.

Automated summary

We investigate the dynamics of a single mobile impurity in a bath of Anderson localized particles in the regime of relatively strong disorder and interactions. We find that at short times, there is evidence of many-body localization, but at longer timescales, the impurity spreads subdiffusively and gradually delocalizes the Anderson insulator. The observed phenomenology includes subdiffusive growth of mean square displacement, power-law decay of density correlation functions, and power-law growth of entanglement entropy.