Assistant Professor Li Xiao , City University of Hong Kong

The fate of an isolated quantum many-body system has attracted much attention in the past decade. One of the most important issues is whether such a system can reach thermalization under its own dynamics after a sudden quench. While thermalization is indeed expected in many cases, the opposite can happen in several different scenarios. In this talk, I will discuss our work in two systems that are known to escape thermalization. The first one is many-body localization, which is realized when strong quenched disorder is present. In particular, I will emphasize on how the existence of single-particle mobility edge affects the many-body localization. The other is the quantum many-body scar, which is realized in a translationally invariant system. These results will help us better understand non-equilibrium phases of matter in a closed quantum many-body system.