Stabilizing Disorder-Free Localization

Understand

Disorder-free localization is a paradigm of nonergodicity in translation-invariant quantum many-body systems hosting gauge symmetries.

• The quench dynamics starting from simple initial states, which correspond to extensive superpositions of gauge superselection sectors, exhibits many-body localization with the system dynamically inducing its own disorder.
• An open question concerns the stability of disorder-free localization in the presence of gauge-breaking errors, and whether processes due to the latter can be controllably suppressed.
• Here, we show that translation-invariant \textit{single-body gauge terms} induce a quantum Zeno effect that reliably protects disorder-free localization against errors up to times at least polynomial in the protection strength.