Recent years have seen the development of isolated quantum simulator platforms capable of exploring interesting questions at the frontiers of many-body physics. We describe our platform, based on a chain of Ytterbium ions in a linear trap, and describe its capabilities, which include long-range spin-spin interactions and single-site manipulation and readout. We then describe some recent studies undertaken with this machine, focusing on two. The first is the observation of domain-wall confinement, in which the long-range interactions cause individual domain walls to become bound into meson-like quasiparticles. The second, observation of Stark many-body localization, in which a linearly increasing gradient halts thermalization in favor of a state similar to disorder-induced many-body localization. Finally, we discuss these observations through the lens of Hilbert space fragmentation, which may provide a unifying framework for these distinct forms of ergodicity breaking.

Pizza and drinks served after the talk.