No Arabic abstract
We report in this paper our numerical analysis of energy level spacing statistics for the one-dimensional spin-$1/2$ XXZ model in random on-site longitudinal magnetic fields $B_i$ ($-hleq B_ileq h$)). We concentrate on the strong disorder limit $J_{perp}<<J_z,h)$ where $J_z$ and $J_{perp}$ are the (nearest neighbor) spin interaction strength in $z$- and planar ($xy$)- directions, respectively. The system is expected to be in a many-body localized (MBL) state in this parameter regime. By analyzing the energy-level spacing statistics as a function of strength of random magnetic field $h$, energy of the many-body state $E$, the number of spin-$uparrow$ particles in the system $M=sum_i(s_i^z+{1over2})$ and the spin interaction strengths $J_z$ and $J_{perp}$, we show that there exists a small parameter region $J_zsim h$ where ergodic behaviour emerges at the middle of the many-body energy spectrum when $Msim{Nover2}$ ($N=$ length of spin chain). The emerging ergodic phase shows qualitatively different behaviour compared with the usual ergodic phase that exists in the weak-disorder limit.
Some interacting disordered many-body systems are unable to thermalize when the quenched disorder becomes larger than a threshold value. Although several properties of nonzero energy density eigenstates (in the middle of the many-body spectrum) exhibit a qualitative change across this many-body localization (MBL) transition, many of the commonly-used diagnostics only do so over a broad transition regime. Here, we provide evidence that the transition can be located precisely even at modest system sizes by sharply-defined changes in the distribution of extremal eigenvalues of the reduced density matrix of subsystems. In particular, our results suggest that $p* = lim_{lambda_2 rightarrow ln(2)^{+}}P_2(lambda_2)$, where $P_2(lambda_2)$ is the probability distribution of the second lowest entanglement eigenvalue $lambda_2$, behaves as an order-parameter for the MBL phase: $p*> 0$ in the MBL phase, while $p* = 0$ in the ergodic phase with thermalization. Thus, in the MBL phase, there is a nonzero probability that a subsystem is entangled with the rest of the system only via the entanglement of one subsystem qubit with degrees of freedom outside the region. In contrast, this probability vanishes in the thermal phase.
We show how the thermodynamic properties of large many-body localized systems can be studied using quantum Monte Carlo simulations. To this end we devise a heuristic way of constructing local integrals of motion of very high quality, which are added to the Hamiltonian in conjunction with Lagrange multipliers. The ground state simulation of the shifted Hamiltonian corresponds to a high-energy state of the original Hamiltonian in case of exactly known local integrals of motion. We can show that the inevitable mixing between eigenstates as a consequence of non-perfect integrals of motion is weak enough such that the characteristics of many-body localized systems are not averaged out in our approach, unlike the standard ensembles of statistical mechanics. Our method paves the way to study higher dimensions and indicates that a full many-body localized phase in 2d, where (nearly) all eigenstates are localized, is likely to exist.
We numerically study both the avalanche instability and many-body resonances in strongly-disordered spin chains exhibiting many-body localization (MBL). We distinguish between a finite-size/time MBL regime, and the asymptotic MBL phase, and identify some landmarks within the MBL regime. Our first landmark is an estimate of where the MBL phase becomes unstable to avalanches, obtained by measuring the slowest relaxation rate of a finite chain coupled to an infinite bath at one end. Our estimates indicate that the actual MBL-to-thermal phase transition, in infinite-length systems, occurs much deeper in the MBL regime than has been suggested by most previous studies. Our other landmarks involve system-wide resonances. We find that the effective matrix elements producing eigenstates with system-wide resonances are enormously broadly distributed. This means that the onset of such resonances in typical samples occurs quite deep in the MBL regime, and the first such resonances typically involve rare pairs of eigenstates that are farther apart in energy than the minimum gap. Thus we find that the resonance properties define two landmarks that divide the MBL regime in to three subregimes: (i) at strongest disorder, typical samples do not have any eigenstates that are involved in system-wide many-body resonances; (ii) there is a substantial intermediate regime where typical samples do have such resonances, but the pair of eigenstates with the minimum spectral gap does not; and (iii) in the weaker randomness regime, the minimum gap is involved in a many-body resonance and thus subject to level repulsion. Nevertheless, even in this third subregime, all but a vanishing fraction of eigenstates remain non-resonant and the system thus still appears MBL in many respects. Based on our estimates of the location of the avalanche instability, it might be that the MBL phase is only part of subregime (i).
The Loschmidt echo, defined as the overlap between quantum wave function evolved with different Hamiltonians, quantifies the sensitivity of quantum dynamics to perturbations and is often used as a probe of quantum chaos. In this work we consider the behavior of the Loschmidt echo in the many body localized phase, which is characterized by emergent local integrals of motion, and provides a generic example of non-ergodic dynamics. We demonstrate that the fluctuations of the Loschmidt echo decay as a power law in time in the many-body localized phase, in contrast to the exponential decay in few-body ergodic systems. We consider the spin-echo generalization of the Loschmidt echo, and argue that the corresponding correlation function saturates to a finite value in localized systems. Slow, power-law decay of fluctuations of such spin-echo-type overlap is related to the operator spreading and is present only in the many-body localized phase, but not in a non-interacting Anderson insulator. While most of the previously considered probes of dephasing dynamics could be understood by approximating physical spin operators with local integrals of motion, the Loschmidt echo and its generalizations crucially depend on the full expansion of the physical operators via local integrals of motion operators, as well as operators which flip local integrals of motion. Hence, these probes allow to get insights into the relation between physical operators and local integrals of motion, and access the operator spreading in the many-body localized phase.
Using numerically exact methods we study transport in an interacting spin chain which for sufficiently strong spatially constant electric field is expected to experience Stark many-body localization. We show that starting from a generic initial state, a spin-excitation remains localized only up to a finite delocalization time, which depends exponentially on the size of the system and the strength of the electric field. This suggests that bona fide Stark many-body localization occurs only in the thermodynamic limit. We also demonstrate that the transient localization in a finite system and for electric fields stronger than the interaction strength can be well approximated by a Magnus expansion up-to times which grow with the electric field strength.