Controlling symmetry and localization with an artificial gauge field in a disordered quantum system.

Abstract of the article 1382 published in Nature Communications volume 9 April 11, 2018: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03481-9. "Anderson localization, the absence of diffusion in disordered media, draws its origins from the destructive interference between multiple scattering paths. The localization properties of disordered systems are expected to be dramatically sensitive to their symmetries. So far, this question has been little explored experimentally. Here we investigate the realization of an artificial gauge field in a synthetic (temporal) dimension of a disordered, periodically driven quantum system. Tuning the strength of this gauge field allows us to control the parity–time symmetry properties of the system, which we probe through the experimental observation of three symmetry-sensitive signatures of localization. The first two are the coherent backscattering, marker of weak localization, and the recently predicted coherent forward scattering, genuine interferential signature of Anderson localization. The third is the direct measurement of the β(g) scaling function in two different symmetry classes, allowing to demonstrate its universality and the one-parameter scaling hypothesis." Clément Hainaut, Isam Manai, Jean-François Clément, Jean Claude Garreau, Pascal Szriftgiser, Gabriel Lemarié, Nicolas Cherroret, Dominique Delande & Radu Chicireanu © 2018 C.H., I.M., J.-F.C., J.C.G., P.S., and R.C. performed the experiments and G.L., N.C., and D.D. performed the theoretical work. All authors contributed to the preparation of this manuscript. Tous droits réservés.