Quantum subdiffusion with two- and three-body interactions

Abstract

We study the dynamics of a few-quantum-particle cloud in the presence of two- and three-body interactions in weakly disordered one-dimensional lattices. The interaction is dramatically enhancing the Anderson localization length ξ1 of noninteracting particles. We launch compact wave packets and show that few-body interactions lead to transient subdiffusion of wave packets, m2 ∼ tα, α < 1, on length scales beyond ξ1. The subdiffusion exponent is independent of the number of particles. Two-body interactions yield α ≈ 0.5 for two and three particles, while three-body interactions decrease it to α ≈ 0.2. The tails of expanding wave packets exhibit exponential localization with a slowly decreasing exponent. We relate our results to subdiffusion in nonlinear random lattices, and to results on restricted diffusion in high-dimensional spaces like e.g. on comb lattices. c EDP Sciences, Societ`a Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag 2017