Many-body localization (MBL) is a many-body quantum phenomenon that fails to thermalize under strong disorder. While experimental work on optical lattice systems suggests the existence of a MBL phase in 2D, there have been challenges regarding its existence in two dimensions. The main challenge of MBL in higher dimensions is an avalanche instability: rare regions of weak disorder can act as a thermal bath, which eventually thermalizes the entire system.
In this talk, I will discuss the stability of 2D MBL using 7Li ultracold atoms in optical lattices up to 1500 tunneling times. By using a Digital Micromirror Device (DMD), we control the system size up to 24x24 sites, allowing us to study MBL dynamics beyond classically simulable ranges.
We investigated the long-time dynamics under two distinct disorder potentials: quasiperiodic and random disorder. The MBL crossover point shifts to higher disorder strengths as system size increases, which supports the avalanche scenario. In contrast, with quasiperiodic disorder, we observe no clear system size dependence among all experimental range, indicating a possible stability of the MBL phase in two dimensions.