Dresden 2026 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 13: Focus Session: New Routes to Localization and Quantum Non-Ergodicity II (joint session TT/DY)

DY 13.2: Talk

Monday, March 9, 2026, 15:15–15:30, CHE/0091

Disorder-free localization from mass-imbalanced fractionalization — •Shi Feng, Johannes Knolle, and Michael Knap — Technical University of Munich, Garching, Germany

We report disorder-free localization of Majorana fermions over intermediate timescales in an emergent gapless non-integrable Z₂ quantum liquid. A large density of heavy visons induced by an external magnetic field provides coherent disorder that localizes the light fermions while preserving translation symmetry. Compelling evidence of the localization within intermediate time scale is provided by the time evolution of the local energy density, which shows negligible spreading after a local quench on its ground state; and a vanishing energy current response despite the gapless energy spectrum. These results demonstrate that the disorder-free localization can also occur near equilibrium at low energy, and offer an explanation to the thermal paradox in recent experiments where a linear specific heat coexists with vanishing thermal transport in frustrated Mott insulators with disorder-free gapless quantum magnets.

Keywords: Disorder-free localization; Fractionalization; Quantum spin liquids