{"id":235619,"date":"2026-04-20T22:35:54","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T03:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/quantum-gas-resists-heating-under-periodic-kicks-revealing-many-body-localization-mechanism"},"modified":"2026-04-20T22:35:54","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T03:35:54","slug":"quantum-gas-resists-heating-under-periodic-kicks-revealing-many-body-localization-mechanism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/quantum-gas-resists-heating-under-periodic-kicks-revealing-many-body-localization-mechanism","title":{"rendered":"Quantum gas resists heating under periodic kicks, revealing many-body localization mechanism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/quantum-gas-resists-heating-under-periodic-kicks-revealing-many-body-localization-mechanism2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A joint theoretical study by the University of Innsbruck and Zhejiang University has uncovered the microscopic origin of a striking quantum phenomenon: a periodically driven gas of ultracold atoms that simply refuses to heat up, defying classical expectations.<\/p>\n<p>Push a swing repeatedly in rhythm, and it swings higher and higher, absorbing more and more energy. A quantum gas, however, can behave very differently. Under <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2025-08-quantum-gas-physicists-body-dynamical.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">periodic kicks<\/a>, quantum interference can freeze energy absorption entirely, a phenomenon known as dynamical localization. Whether this survives when particles interact with each other has been a long-standing open question. A <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2025-08-quantum-gas-physicists-body-dynamical.html\">2025 experiment<\/a> by the research group of Hanns-Christoph N\u00e4gerl at the Department of Experimental Physics confirmed that it can. But the microscopic reasons remained until now unclear.<\/p>\n<p>A new theoretical study by Prof. Lei Ying\u2019s team at Zhejiang University, in collaboration with Prof. Hanns-Christoph N\u00e4gerl\u2019s group at the University of Innsbruck, <a href=\"https:\/\/link.aps.org\/doi\/10.1103\/q14j-65qd\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Physical Review Letters<\/i>, provides the missing explanation. The team developed a <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2024-04-ultimately-theory-quantum-materials.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">mathematical framework<\/a> that transforms the complex-driven many-body problem into a tractable lattice model. This reveals that interactions introduce a universal power-law structure that reshapes localization\u2014and ultimately drives its breakdown at intermediate interaction strengths.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A joint theoretical study by the University of Innsbruck and Zhejiang University has uncovered the microscopic origin of a striking quantum phenomenon: a periodically driven gas of ultracold atoms that simply refuses to heat up, defying classical expectations. Push a swing repeatedly in rhythm, and it swings higher and higher, absorbing more and more energy. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2229,48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mathematics","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}