Speaker
Description
Tremendous experimental progress in ultracold atomic systems, isolated from the environment, led to the observation of many-body localization (MBL). The question remains, however, whether MBL can be observed in disordered electronic systems for which it was originally predicted. For this, decoupling from the lattice phonons is required, which is possible only in out-of-equilibrium systems. Here I show that in suspended films such an electron-phonon decoupling may happen, manifesting itself via a bistability in the electron temperature which can be observed experimentally through hysteretic jumps of several orders of magnitude in the nonlinear current-voltage characteristics. A necessary condition for such a regime is an Arrhenius form of the equilibrium conductivity. I report on experiments with suspended films where the bistability has been observed.