No Arabic abstract
We discuss the onset of many body localisation in a one-dimensional system composed of a XXZ quantum spin chain and a Bose-Hubbard model linearly coupled together. We consider two complementary setups depending whether spatial disorder is initially imprinted on spins or on bosons; in both cases, we explore the conditions for the disordered portion of the system to localise by proximity of the other clean half. Assuming that the dynamics of one of the two parts develops on shorter time scales than the other, we can adiabatically eliminate the fast degrees of freedom, and derive an effective hamiltonian for the systems remainder using projection operator techniques. Performing a locator expansion on the strength of the many-body interaction term or on the hopping amplitude of the effective hamiltonian thus derived, we present results on the stability of the many body localised phases induced by proximity effect. We also briefly comment on the feasibility of the proposed model through modern quantum optics architectures, with the long-term perspective to realize experimentally, in composite open systems, Anderson or many-body localisation proximity effects.
It is typically assumed that disorder is essential to realize Anderson localization. Recently, a number of proposals have suggested that an interacting, translation invariant system can also exhibit localization. We examine these claims in the context of a one-dimensional spin ladder. At intermediate time scales, we find slow growth of entanglement entropy consistent with the phenomenology of many-body localization. However, at longer times, all finite wavelength spin polarizations decay in a finite time, independent of system size. We identify a single length scale which parametrically controls both the eventual spin transport times and the divergence of the susceptibility to spin glass ordering. We dub this long pre-thermal dynamical behavior, intermediate between full localization and diffusion, quasi-many body localization.
Thermal and many-body localized phases are separated by a dynamical phase transition of a new kind. We analyze the distribution of off-diagonal matrix elements of local operators across the many-body localization transition (MBLT) in a disordered spin chain, and use it to characterize the breakdown of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis and to extract the many-body Thouless energy. We find a wide critical region around the MBLT, where Thouless energy becomes smaller than the level spacing, while matrix elements show critical dependence on the energy difference. In the same region, matrix elements, viewed as amplitudes of a fictitious wave function, exhibit strong multifractality. Our findings show that the correlation length becomes larger than the accessible system sizes in a broad range of disorder strength values, and shed light on the critical behaviour of MBL systems.
Eigenstates of fully many-body localized (FMBL) systems are described by quasilocal operators $tau_i^z$ (l-bits), which are conserved exactly under Hamiltonian time evolution. The algebra of the operators $tau_i^z$ and $tau_i^x$ associated with l-bits ($boldsymbol{tau}_i$) completely defines the eigenstates and the matrix elements of local operators between eigenstates at all energies. We develop a non-perturbative construction of the full set of l-bit algebras in the many-body localized phase for the canonical model of MBL. Our algorithm to construct the Pauli-algebra of l-bits combines exact diagonalization and a tensor network algorithm developed for efficient diagonalization of large FMBL Hamiltonians. The distribution of localization lengths of the l-bits is evaluated in the MBL phase and used to characterize the MBL-to-thermal transition.
We propose a new approach to probing ergodicity and its breakdown in quantum many-body systems based on their response to a local perturbation. We study the distribution of matrix elements of a local operator between the systems eigenstates, finding a qualitatively different behaviour in the many-body localized (MBL) and ergodic phases. To characterize how strongly a local perturbation modifies the eigenstates, we introduce the parameter ${cal G}(L)=langle ln (V_{nm}/delta) rangle$, which represents a disorder-averaged ratio of a typical matrix element of a local operator $V$ to the energy level spacing, $delta$; this parameter is reminiscent of the Thouless conductance in the single-particle localization. We show that the parameter ${cal G}(L)$ decreases with system size $L$ in the MBL phase, and grows in the ergodic phase. We surmise that the delocalization transition occurs when ${cal G}(L)$ is independent of system size, ${cal G}(L)={cal G}_csim 1$. We illustrate our approach by studying the many-body localization transition and resolving the many-body mobility edge in a disordered 1D XXZ spin-1/2 chain using exact diagonalization and time-evolving block decimation methods. Our criterion for the MBL transition gives insights into microscopic details of transition. Its direct physical consequences, in particular logarithmically slow transport at the transition, and extensive entanglement entropy of the eigenstates, are consistent with recent renormalization group predictions.
We investigate the phase transition between an ergodic and a many-body localized phase in infinite anisotropic spin-$1/2$ Heisenberg chains with binary disorder. Starting from the Neel state, we analyze the decay of antiferromagnetic order $m_s(t)$ and the growth of entanglement entropy $S_{textrm{ent}}(t)$ during unitary time evolution. Near the phase transition we find that $m_s(t)$ decays exponentially to its asymptotic value $m_s(infty) eq 0$ in the localized phase while the data are consistent with a power-law decay at long times in the ergodic phase. In the localized phase, $m_s(infty)$ shows an exponential sensitivity on disorder with a critical exponent $ usim 0.9$. The entanglement entropy in the ergodic phase grows subballistically, $S_{textrm{ent}}(t)sim t^alpha$, $alphaleq 1$, with $alpha$ varying continuously as a function of disorder. Exact diagonalizations for small systems, on the other hand, do not show a clear scaling with system size and attempts to determine the phase boundary from these data seem to overestimate the extent of the ergodic phase.