Many-body localization (MBL) is a dynamical phenomenon which leads to the breakdown of equilibrium statistical mechanics in isolated many-body systems. Such systems never reach local thermal equilibrium, and retain local memory of their initial conditions for infinite times. One can still define a notion of phase structure in these out-of-equilibrium systems. Strikingly, MBL can even enable new kinds of exotic orders that are disallowed in thermal equilibrium – a phenomenon that goes by the name of localization-protected quantum order (LPQO) or eigenstate order.
Background
The study of phases of matter and the transitions between them has been a central enterprise in physics for well over a century. One of the earliest paradigms for elucidating phase structure, associated most with Landau, classifies phases according to the spontaneous breaking of global symmetries present in a physical system. More recently, we have also made great strides in understanding topological phases of matter which lie outside Landau's framework: the order in topological phases cannot be characterized by local patterns of symmetry breaking, and is instead encoded in global patterns of quantum entanglement.
All of this remarkable progress rests on the foundation of equilibrium statistical mechanics. Phases and phase transitions are only sharply defined for macroscopic systems in the thermodynamic limit, and statistical mechanics allows us to make useful predictions about such macroscopic systems with many (~ 1023) constituent particles. A fundamental assumption of statistical mechanics is that systems generically reach a state of thermal equilibrium (such as the Gibbs state) which can be characterized by only a few parameters such as temperature or a chemical potential. Traditionally, phase structure is studied by examining the behavior of ``order parameters" in equilibrium states. At zero temperature, these are evaluated in the ground state of the system, and different phases correspond to different quantum orders (topological or otherwise). Thermal equilibrium strongly constrains the allowed orders at finite temperatures. In general, thermal fluctuations at finite temperatures reduce the long-ranged quantum correlations present in ordered phases and, in lower dimensions, can destroy order altogether. As an example, the Peierls-Mermin-Wagner theorems prove that a one dimensional system cannot spontaneously break a continuous symmetry at any non-zero temperature.
Recent progress on the phenomenon of many-body localization has revealed classes of generic (typically disordered) many-body systems which never reach local thermal equilibrium, and thus lie outside the framework of equilibrium statistical mechanics. MBL systems can undergo a dynamical phase transition to a thermalizing phase as parameters such as the disorder or interaction strength are tuned, and the nature of the MBL-to-thermal phase transition is an active area of research. The existence of MBL raises the interesting question of whether one can have different kinds of MBL phases, just as there are different kinds of thermalizing phases. Remarkably, the answer is affirmative, and out-of-equilibrium systems can also display a rich phase structure. What's more, the suppression of thermal fluctuations in localized systems can even allow for new kinds of order that are forbidden in equilibrium -- which is the essence of localization-protected quantum order. The recent discovery of time-crystals in periodically driven MBL systems is a notable example of this phenomenon.
Phases out of equilibrium: eigenstate order
Studying phase structure in localized systems requires us to first formulate a sharp notion of a phase away from thermal equilibrium. This is done via the notion of eigenstate order: one can measure order parameters and correlation functions in individual energy eigenstates of a many-body system, instead of averaging over several eigenstates as in a Gibbs state. The key point is that individual eigenstates can show patterns of order that may be invisible to thermodynamic averages over eigenstates. Indeed, a thermodynamic ensemble average isn't even appropriate in MBL systems since they never reach thermal equilibrium. What's more, while individual eigenstates aren't themselves experimentally accessible, order in eigenstates nevertheless has measurable dynamical signatures. The eigenspectrum properties change in a singular fashion as the system transitions between from one type of MBL phase to another, or from an MBL phase to a thermal one---again with measurable dynamical signatures.