Many-body localization in translationally invariant diamond ladders with flat bands

Abstract

The presence of flat bands is a source of localization in lattice systems. While flat bands are often unstable with respect to interactions between the particles, they can persist in certain cases. We consider a diamond ladder with transverse hopping that possesses such stable flat bands and show that many-body localization appears in the presence of interactions without quenched disorder. We numerically demonstrate that the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis is violated. We show that the influence of degenerate flat band states spreads across the full energy spectrum and grows extensively in the thermodynamic limit. Furthermore, we verify localization in terms of time evolution of some local observable, revival probability, participation ratio, and entanglement entropy.