Oliver Hart- University of Colorado

When do many-body quantum systems fail to reach thermal equilibrium under their own dynamics? Furthermore, just how robust can this ergodicity breaking be? These questions underpin the field of quantum dynamics and many physicists have wrestled with them during the past decade. In this talk I will present a recent breakthrough, which provides a route to obtaining ergodicity breaking with an unprecedented degree of robustness. By incorporating concepts from topological phases of matter into quantum dynamics, we arrive at a model that is robust to arbitrary (k-local) perturbations. I will provide an overview of how this development compares to more “traditional” ways to evade thermalization and discuss the rich phenomenology that models of topologically stable ergodicity breaking can exhibit.

Bio: Oliver Hart is a theoretical condensed matter physicist interested in a broad range of problems from nonequilibrium quantum dynamics to nonlocal quantum games to the application of nonlinear response in solid state and synthetic systems. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Cambridge in the UK, where he stayed for his PhD as part of the Theory of Condensed Matter group. Since then, he has spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Theory of Quantum Matter at the University of Colorado, Boulder.