Experimental probes of Stark many-body localization

Recent work has focused on exploring many-body localization (MBL) in systems without quenched disorder: one such proposal is Stark MBL in which small perturbations to a strong linear potential yield localization. However, as with conventional MBL, it is challenging to experimentally distinguish between noninteracting localization and true MBL. In this paper, we show that several existing experimental probes, designed specifically to differentiate between these scenarios, work similarly in the Stark MBL setting. In particular, we show that a modified spin-echo response shows clear signs of a power-law decay for Stark MBL while quickly saturating for disorder-free Wannier-Stark localization. Furthermore, we observe the characteristic logarithmic-in-time spreading of quantum mutual information in the Stark MBL regime, and an absence of spreading in a noninteracting Stark-localized system. We also show that there are no significant differences in several existing MBL measures for a system consisting of soft-core bosons with repulsive on-site interactions. Lastly, we discuss why curvature or small disorder are needed for an accurate reproduction of MBL phenomenology and how this may be illustrated in experiment. This also connects with recent progress on Hilbert space fragmentation in fractonic models with a conserved dipole moment, and we suggest this as an auspicious platform for experimental investigations of these phenomena.