Carlo Danieli

Flat-band engineering of mobility edges

Properly modulated flatband lattices have a divergent density of states at the flatband energy. Quasiperiodic modulations are known to host a metal insulator transition already in one space dimension. Their embedding into flatband geometries consequently allows for a precise engineering and fine tuning of mobility edges. We obtain analytic expressions for singular mobility edges for two flatband lattice examples. In particular, we engineer cases with arbitrarily small energy separations of mobility edge, zeroes, and divergencies.

Intermittent many-body dynamics at equilibrium

The equilibrium value of an observable defines a manifold in the phase space of an ergodic and equipartitioned many-body system. A typical trajectory pierces that manifold infinitely often as time goes to infinity. We use these piercings to measure both the relaxation time of the lowest frequency eigenmode of the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam chain, as well as the fluctuations of the subsequent dynamics in equilibrium. The dynamics in equilibrium is characterized by a power-law distribution of excursion times far off equilibrium, with diverging variance. Long excursions arise from sticky dynamics close to q-breathers localized in normal mode space. Measuring the exponent allows one to predict the transition into nonergodic dynamics. We generalize our method to Klein-Gordon lattices where the sticky dynamics is due to discrete breathers localized in real space.

Quasiperiodic driving of Anderson localized waves in one dimension.

We consider a quantum particle in a one-dimensional disordered lattice with Anderson localization in the presence of multifrequency perturbations of the onsite energies. Using the Floquet representation, we transform the eigenvalue problem into a Wannier-Stark basis. Each frequency component contributes either to a single channel or a multichannel connectivity along the lattice, depending on the control parameters. The single-channel regime is essentially equivalent to the undriven case. The multichannel driving increases substantially the localization length for slow driving, showing two different scaling regimes of weak and strong driving, yet the localization length stays finite for a finite number of frequency components.

Approximating metal–insulator transitions

We consider quantum wave propagation in one-dimensional quasiperiodic lattices. We propose an iterative construction of quasiperiodic potentials from sequences of potentials with increasing spatial period. At each finite iteration step the eigenstates reflect the properties of the limiting quasiperiodic potential properties up to a controlled maximum system size. We then observe approximate metal-insulator transitions (MIT) at the finite iteration steps. We also report evidence on mobility edges which are at variance to the celebrated Aubry-Andre model. The dynamics near the MIT shows a critical slowing down of the ballistic group velocity in the metallic phase similar to the divergence of the localization length in the insulating phase.We consider quantum wave propagation in one-dimensional quasiperiodic lattices. We propose an iterative construction of quasiperiodic potentials from sequences of potentials with increasing spatial period. At each finite iteration step the eigenstates reflect the properties of the limiting quasiperiodic potential properties up to a controlled maximum system size. We then observe approximate metalinsulator transitions (MIT) at the finite iteration steps. We also report evidence on mobility edges which are at variance to the celebrated Aubry-Andre model. The dynamics near the MIT shows a critical slowing down of the ballistic group velocity in the metallic phase similar to the divergence of the localization length in the insulating phase.