Many-body localization in an $XY$ model with a long-range interaction is investigated. We show that in the regime of a high strength of disordering compared to the interaction an off-resonant flip-flop spin-spin interaction (hopping) generates the effective Ising interactions of spins in the third order of perturbation theory in a hopping. The combination of hopping and induced Ising interactions for the power law distance dependent hopping $V(R) \propto R^{-α}$ always leads to the localization breakdown in a thermodynamic limit of an infinite system at $α< 3d/2$ where $d$ is a system dimension. The delocalization takes place due to the induced Ising interactions $U(R) \propto R^{-2α}$ of "extended" resonant pairs. This prediction is consistent with the numerical finite size scaling in one-dimensional systems. Many-body localization in $XY$ model is more stable with respect to the long-range interaction compared to a many-body problem with similar Ising and Heisenberg interactions requiring $α\geq 2d$ which makes the practical implementations of this model more attractive for quantum information applications. The full summary of dimension constraints and localization threshold size dependencies for many-body localization in the case of combined Ising and hopping interactions is obtained using this and previous work and it is the subject for the future experimental verification using cold atomic systems.
We study the phenomenon of many-body localization (MBL) in an interacting system subjected to a combined DC as well as a square wave AC electric field. First, the condition for the dynamical localization, coherent destruction of Wannier-Stark localization and super Bloch oscillations in the non-interacting limit, are obtained semi-classically. In the presence of interactions (and a confining/disordered potential), a static field alone leads to "Stark many-body localization", for sufficiently large field strengths. We find that in the presence of an additional high-frequency AC field, there are…
The article reviews the physics of Anderson localization on random regular graphs (RRG) and its connections to many-body localization (MBL) in disordered interacting systems. Properties of eigenstate and energy level correlations in delocalized and localized phases, as well at criticality, are discussed. In the many-body part, models with short-range and power-law interactions are considered, as well as the quantum-dot model representing the limit of the "most long-range" interaction. Central themes -- which are common to the RRG and MBL problems -- include ergodicity of the delocalized phase,…
We study effects of disorder on eigenstates of 1D two-component fermions with infinitely strong Hubbard repulsion. We demonstrate that the spin-independent (potential) disorder reduces the problem to the one-particle Anderson localization taking place at arbitrarily weak disorder. In contrast, a random magnetic field can cause reentrant many-body localization-delocalization transitions. Surprisingly weak magnetic field destroys one-particle localization caused by not too strong potential disorder, whereas at much stronger fields the states are many-body localized. We present numerical support …
We study the combined effect of quasiperiodic disorder, driven and interaction in the periodically kicked Aubry-André model. In the non-interacting limit, by analyzing the quasienergy spectrum statistics, we verify the existence of a dynamical localization transition in the high-frequency region, whereas the spectrum statistics becomes intricate in the low-frequency region due to the emergence of the extended/localized-to-multifractal edges in the quasienergy spectrum, which separate the multifractal states from the extended (localized) states. When the interaction is introduced, we find the p…
We analyze functionals that characterize the distribution of eigenstates in Fock space through a tool derived from algebraic topology: persistent homology. Drawing on recent generalizations of the localization landscape applicable to mid-spectrum eigenstates, we introduce several novel persistent homology observables in the context of many-body localization that exhibit transitional behavior near the critical point. We demonstrate that the persistent homology approach to localization landscapes and, in general, functionals on the Fock space lattice offer insights into the structure of eigensta…
We construct an analytic theory of many-body localization (MBL) in random spin chains. The approach is based on a first quantized perspective in which MBL is understood as a localization phenomenon on the high dimensional lattice defined by the discrete Hilbert space of the clean system. We construct a field theory on that lattice and apply it to discuss the stability of a weak disorder (`Wigner-Dyson') and a strong disorder (`Poisson') phase.
The impact of geometry on many body localization is studied on simple, exemplary systems amenable to exact diagonalization treatment. The crossover between ergodic and MBL phase for uniform as well as quasi-random disorder is analyzed using statistics of energy levels. It is observed that the transition to many-body localized phase is correlated with the number of nearest coupled neighbors. The crossover from extended to localized systems is approximately described by the so called plasma model.
We study many-body localization for a disordered chain of spin 1/2 fermions. In [Phys. Rev. B \textbf{94}, 241104 (2016)], when both down and up components are exposed to the same strong disorder, the authors observe a power law growth of the entanglement entropy that suggests that many-body localization is not complete; the density (charge) degree of freedom is localized, while the spin degree of freedom is apparently delocalized. We show that this power-like behavior is only a transient effect and that, for longer times, the growth is logarithmic in time suggesting that the spin degree of fr…
One challenge of studying the many-body localization transition is defining the length scale that diverges upon the transition to the ergodic phase. In this manuscript we explore the localization properties of a ring with onsite disorder subject to an imaginary magnetic flux. We connect the imaginary flux which delocalizes single-particle orbitals of an Anderson-localized ring with the localization length of an open chain. We thus identify the delocalizing imaginary flux per site with the inverse localization length. We put this intuition to use by exploring the phase diagram of a disordered i…
We numerically study the possibility of many-body localization transition in a disordered quantum dimer model on the honeycomb lattice. By using the peculiar constraints of this model and state-of-the-art exact diagonalization and time evolution methods, we probe both eigenstates and dynamical properties and conclude on the existence of a localization transition, on the available time and length scales (system sizes of up to N=108 sites). We critically discuss these results and their implications.
We study the remanent magnetization in antiferromagnetic, many-body localized quantum spin chains, initialized in a fully magnetized state. Its long time limit is an order parameter for the localization transition, which is readily accessible by standard experimental probes in magnets. We analytically calculate its value in the strong-disorder regime exploiting the explicit construction of quasi-local conserved quantities of the localized phase. We discuss analogies in cold atomic systems.
A periodically driven rotor is a prototypical model that exhibits a transition to chaos in the classical regime and dynamical localization (related to Anderson localization) in the quantum regime. In a recent work [Phys. Rev. B 94, 085120 (2016)], A. C. Keser et al. considered a many-body generalization of coupled quantum kicked rotors, and showed that in the special integrable linear case, dynamical localization survives interactions. By analogy with many-body localization, the phenomenon was dubbed dynamical many-body localization. In the present work, we study nonintegrable models of single…
The presence of frozen uncorrelated random on-site potential in interacting quantum systems can induce a transition from an ergodic phase to a localized one, the so-called many-body localization. Here we numerically study the effects of auto-correlated disorder on the static and dynamical properties of a one-dimensional many-body quantum system which exhibits many-body localization. Specifically, by means of some standard measures of energy level repulsion and localization of energy eigenstates, we show that a strong degree of correlations between the on-site potentials in the one-dimensional …
We use exact diagonalization to explore the many-body localization transition in a random-field spin-1/2 chain. We examine the correlations within each many-body eigenstate, looking at all high-energy states and thus effectively working at infinite temperature. For weak random field the eigenstates are thermal, as expected in this nonlocalized, "ergodic" phase. For strong random field the eigenstates are localized, with only short-range entanglement. We roughly locate the localization transition and examine some of its finite-size scaling, finding that this quantum phase transition at nonzero …
Inspired by recent experiments on many-body localized systems coupled to an environment, we apply a Flow Equation method to study the problem of a disorder chain of spinless fermions, coupled via density-density interactions to a second clean chain of spinless fermions. In particular, we focus on the conditions for the onset of a many-body localized phase in the clean sector of our model by proximity to the dirty one. We find that a many-body localization proximity effect in the clean component is established when the density of dirty fermions exceeds a threshold value. From the flow equation …
For random quantum spin models, the strong disorder perturbative expansion of the Local Integrals of Motion (LIOMs) around the real-spin operators is revisited. The emphasis is on the links with other properties of the Many-Body-Localized phase, in particular the memory in the dynamics of the local magnetizations and the statistics of matrix elements of local operators in the eigenstate basis. Finally, this approach is applied to analyze the Many-Body-Localization transition in a toy model studied previously from the point of view of the entanglement entropy.
Elements of eigenvectors obtained by exact diagonalization can be considered as two dimensional lattice sites, in which dynamics of a given initial state is seen as a percolating procedure on the lattice sites. Then one can use the percolating procedure to generate a series of fragments of eigenvectors. Combining the fraction ratio and entanglement entropy dynamics of the generated fragment we examine the many-body localization transition in a disordered hard-core bosonic model. It helps us to locate roughly the transition point at the critical disorder strength $W_c\approx 12\sim13$. The scal…
Many-body localization transition in a periodically driven quantum system is investigated using a solution of a matching Bethe lattice problem for Floquet states of a quantum random energy model with a generalization to more realistic settings. It turns out that an external periodic field can both suppress and enhance localization depending on field amplitude and frequency which leads to three distinguishable regimes of field enhanced, controlled and suppressed delocalization. The results can be verified experimentally in systems of cold atoms and/or interacting spin defects in semiconductors.
We consider a one dimensional spin $1/2$ chain with Heisenberg interaction in a disordered parallel magnetic field. This system is known to exhibit the many body localization (MBL) transition at critical strength of disorder. We analyze the response of the chain when additional perpendicular magnetic field is applied to an individual spin and propose a method for accurate determination of the mobility edge via local spin measurements. We further demonstrate that the exponential decrease of the spin response with the distance between perturbed spin and measured spin can be used to characterize …
The dynamics of the highly excited states of a system projected into a single Landau level are analyzed. An analysis of level spacing ratios for finite size systems shows a clear crossover from extend (GUE) to localized (Poisson) statistics, indicating a many body localization transition. However, the location of this transition depends very strongly on system size, and appears to scale to infinite disorder in the thermodynamic limit. This result does not depend on the properties of the ground state (such as whether the ground state exhibits topological order), as expected for a transition of …
We explore the possibility for translationally invariant quantum many-body systems to undergo a dynamical glass transition, at which ergodicity and translational invariance break down spontaneously, driven entirely by quantum effects. In contrast to analogous classical systems, where the existence of such an ideal glass transition remains a controversial issue, a genuine phase transition is predicted in the quantum regime. This ideal quantum glass transition can be regarded as a many-body localization transition due to self-generated disorder. Despite their lack of thermalization, these disord…
Many-body localization (MBL) is a result of the balance between interference-based Anderson localization and many-body interactions in an ultra-high dimensional Fock space. It is usually expected that dissipation is blurring interference and destroying that balance so that the asymptotic state of a system with an MBL Hamiltonian does not bear localization signatures. We demonstrate, within the framework of the Lindblad formalism, that the system can be brought into a steady state with non-vanishing MBL signatures. We use a set of dissipative operators acting on pairs of connected sites (or spi…
In this work we demonstrate that non-random mechanisms that lead to single-particle localization may also lead to many-body localization, even in the absence of disorder. In particular, we consider interacting spins and fermions in the presence of a linear potential. In the non-interacting limit, these models show the well known Wannier-Stark localization. We analyze the fate of this localization in the presence of interactions. Remarkably, we find that beyond a critical value of the potential gradient, these models exhibit non-ergodic behavior as indicated by their spectral and dynamical prop…
The disordered many-body systems can undergo a transition from the extended ensemble to a localized ensemble, known as many-body localization (MBL), which has been intensively explored in recent years. Nevertheless, the relation between Anderson localization (AL) and MBL is still elusive. Here we show that the MBL can be regarded as an infinite-dimensional AL with the correlated disorder in a virtual lattice. We demonstrate this idea using the disordered XXZ model, in which the excitation of $d$ spins over the fully polarized phase can be regarded as a single-particle model in a $d$ dimensiona…
The isolated one-dimensional Heisenberg model with static random magnetic fields has become paradigmatic for the analysis of many-body localization. Here, we study the dynamics of this system initially prepared in a highly-excited nonstationary state. Our focus is on the probability for finding the initial state later in time, the so-called survival probability. Two distinct behaviors are identified before equilibration. At short times, the decay is very fast and equivalent to that of clean systems. It subsequently slows down and develops a powerlaw behavior with an exponent that coincides wit…
We explore correlations of eigenstates around the many-body localization (MBL) transition in their dependence on the energy difference (frequency) $ω$ and disorder $W$. In addition to the genuine many-body problem, XXZ spin chain in random field, we consider localization on random regular graphs (RRG) that serves as a toy model of the MBL transition. Both models show a very similar behavior. On the localized side of the transition, the eigenstate correlation function $β(ω)$ shows a power-law enhancement of correlations with lowering $ω$; the corresponding exponent depends on $W$. The correlati…
Intermediate band semiconductors hold the promise to significantly improve the efficiency of solar cells, but only if the intermediate impurity band is metallic. We apply a recently developed first principles method to investigate the origin of electron localization in Ti doped Si, a promising candidate for intermediate band solar cells. Although Anderson localization is often overlooked in the context of intermediate band solar cells, our results show that in Ti doped Si it plays a more important role in the metal insulator transition than Mott localization. Implications for the theory of int…
Ergodicity in quantum many-body systems is - despite its fundamental importance - still an open problem. Many-body localization provides a general framework for quantum ergodicity, and may therefore offer important insights. However, the characterization of many-body localization through simple observables is a difficult task. In this article, we introduce a measure for distances in Hilbert space for spin-1/2 systems that can be interpreted as a generalization of the Anderson localization length to the many-body Hilbert space. We show that this many-body localization length is equivalent to a …
Recent theoretical and numerical evidence suggests that localization can survive in disordered many-body systems with very high energy density, provided that interactions are sufficiently weak. Stronger interactions can destroy localization, leading to a so-called many-body localization transition. This dynamical phase transition is relevant to questions of thermalization in extended quantum systems far from the zero-temperature limit. It separates a many-body localized phase, in which localization prevents transport and thermalization, from a conducting ("ergodic") phase in which the usual as…
We consider a many-body localized system coupled globally to a central $d$-level system. Under an appropriate scaling of $d$ and $L$, we find evidence that the localized phase survives. We argue for two possible thermalizing phases, depending on whether the qudit becomes fully ergodic. This system provides one of the first examples of many-body localization in the presence of long-range (non-confining) interactions.
We study the eigenstates of a paradigmatic model of many-body localization in the Fock basis constructed out of the natural orbitals. By numerically studying the participation ratio, we identify a sharp crossover between different phases at a disorder strength close to the disorder strength at which subdiffusive behaviour sets in, significantly below the many-body localization transition. We repeat the analysis in the conventionally used computational basis, and show that many-body localized eigenstates are much stronger localized in the Fock basis constructed out of the natural orbitals than …
Many-body localization, the persistence against electron-electron interactions of the localization of states with non-zero excitation energy density, poses a challenge to current methods of theoretical and numerical analysis. Numerical simulations have so far been limited to a small number of sites, making it difficult to obtain reliable statements about the thermodynamic limit. In this paper, we explore the ways in which a relatively small quantum computer could be leveraged to study many-body localization. We show that, in addition to studying time-evolution, a quantum computer can, in polyn…
We demonstrate that many-body localization of two-dimensional weakly interacting bosons in disorder remains stable in the thermodynamic limit at sufficiently low temperatures. Highly energetic particles destroy the localized state only above a critical temperature, which increases with the strength of the disorder. If the particle distribution is truncated at high energies, as it does for cold atom systems, the localization can be stable at any temperature.
We investigate dynamical many-body localization and delocalization in an integrable system of periodically-kicked, interacting linear rotors. The Hamiltonian we investigate is linear in momentum, and its Floquet evolution operator is analytically tractable for arbitrary interaction strengths. One of the hallmarks of this model is that depending on certain parameters, it manifest both localization and delocalization in momentum space. We explicitly show that for this model, the energy being bounded at long times is not a sufficient condition for dynamical localization. Besides integrals of moti…
Many-body localization is shown to suppress imaginary parts of complex eigenenergies for general non-Hermitian Hamiltonians having time-reversal symmetry. We demonstrate that a real-complex transition, which we conjecture occurs upon many-body localization, profoundly affects the dynamical stability of non-Hermitian interacting systems with asymmetric hopping that respect time-reversal symmetry. Moreover, the real-complex transition is shown to be absent in non-Hermitian many-body systems with gain and/or loss that breaks time-reversal symmetry, even though the many-body localization transitio…
Many-body localization (MBL) in a one-dimensional Fermi Hubbard model with random on-site interactions is studied. While for this model all single-particle states are trivially delocalized, it is shown that for sufficiently strong disordered interactions the model is many-body localized. It is therefore argued that MBL does not necessary rely on localization of the single-particle spectrum. This model provides a convenient platform to study pure MBL phenomenology, since Anderson localization in this model does not exist. By examining various forms of the interaction term a dramatic effect of s…
We numerically explore $\mathbb Z_2$-symmetric random interacting Ising-Majorana chains at high energy. A very rich phase diagram emerges with two topologically distinct many-body localization (MBL) regimes separated by a much broader thermal phase than previously found. This is a striking consequence of the avalanche theory. We further find MBL spin-glass order always associated to a many-body spectral pairing, presumably signaling a strong zero mode operator which opens fascinating perspectives for MBL-protected topological qubits.
We investigate the localization properties of a spin chain with an antiferromagnetic nearest-neighbour coupling, subject to an external quasiperiodic on-site magnetic field. The quasiperiodic modulation interpolates between two paradigmatic models, namely the Aubry-André and the Fibonacci models. We find that stronger many-body interactions extend the ergodic phase in the former, whereas they shrink it in the latter. Furthermore, the many-body localization transition points at the two limits of the interpolation appear to be continuously connected along the deformation. As a result, the positi…
We discover a novel localization transition that alters the dynamics of coherence in disordered many-body spin systems subject to Markovian dissipation. The transition occurs in the middle spectrum of the Lindbladian super-operator whose eigenstates obey the universality of non-Hermitian random-matrix theory for weak disorder and exhibit localization of off-diagonal degrees of freedom for strong disorder. This Lindbladian many-body localization prevents many-body decoherence due to interactions and is conducive to robustness of the coherent dynamics characterized by the rigidity of the decay r…
We show that a one-dimensional Hubbard model with all-to-all coupling may exhibit many-body localization in the presence of local disorder. We numerically identify the parameter space where many-body localization occurs using exact diagonalization and finite-size scaling. The time evolution from a random initial state exhibits features consistent with the localization picture. The dynamics can be observed with quantum gases in optical cavities, localization can be revealed through the time-dependent dynamics of the light emitted by the resonator.
We study the dynamics of an interacting quantum spin chain under the application of a linearly increasing field. This model exhibits a type of localization known as Stark many-body localization. The dynamics shows a strong dependence on the initial conditions, indicating that the system violates the conventional ("strong") eigenstate thermalization hypothesis at any finite gradient of the field. This is contrary to reports of a numerically observed ergodic phase. Therefore, the localization is crucially distinct from disorder-driven many-body localization, in agreement with recent predictions …
Motivated by the question of whether disorder is a prerequisite for localization to occur in quantum many-body systems, we study a frustrated one-dimensional spin chain, which supports localized many-body eigenstates in the absence of disorder. When the system is prepared in an initial state with one domain wall, it exhibits characteristic signatures of quasi-many-body localization (quasi- MBL), including initial state memory retention, an exponentially increasing lifetime with enlarging the size of the system, a logarithmic growth of entanglement entropy, and a logarithmic light cone of an ou…
The many-body localization transition is a dynamical quantum phase transition between a localized and an extended phase. We study this transition in the XXZ model with disordered magnetic field and focus on the time evolution following a global quantum quench. While the dynamics of the bipartite entanglement and spin fluctuations are already known to provide insights into the nature of the many-body localized phases, we discuss the relevance of these quantities in the context of the localization transition. In particular, we observe that near the transition the long time limits of both quantit…
We probe the bulk geometry of the Wegner Wilson Flow (WWF) in the context of many-body localization, by addressing efficiency and bulk entanglement growth measures through approximating upper bounds on the boundary entanglement entropy. We connect these upper bounds to the Fubini-Study metric and clarify how a central quantity, the information fluctuation complexity, distinguishes bulk unitary rotation from entanglement production. We also give a short new proof of the small incremental entangling theorem in the absence of ancillas, achieving a dimension-independent, universal factor of $c= 2$…
The possibility of observing many body localization of ultracold atoms in a one dimensional optical lattice is discussed for random interactions. In the non-interacting limit, such a system reduces to single-particle physics in the absence of disorder, i.e. to extended states. In effect the observed localization is inherently due to interactions and is thus a genuine many-body effect. In the system studied, many-body localization manifests itself in a lack of thermalization visible in temporal propagation of a specially prepared initial state, in transport properties, in the logarithmic growth…
We review recent developments in the study of out-of-equilibrium topological states of matter in isolated systems. The phenomenon of many-body localization, exhibited by some isolated systems usually in the presence of quenched disorder, prevents systems from equilibrating to a thermal state where the delicate quantum correlations necessary for topological order are often washed out. Instead, many-body localized systems can exhibit a type of eigenstate phase structure wherein their entire many-body spectrum is characterized by various types of quantum order, usually restricted to quantum groun…
We show that, in a many-body system, all particles can be strongly confined to the initially occupied sites for a time that scales as a high power of the ratio of the bandwidth of site energies to the hopping amplitude. Such time-domain formulation is complementary to the formulation of the many-body localization of all stationary states with a large localization length. The long localization lifetime is achieved by constructing a periodic sequence of site energies with a large period in a one-dimensional chain. The scaling of the localization lifetime is independent of the number of particles…
Finite-size effects have been a major and justifiable source of concern for studies of many-body localization, and several works have been dedicated to the subject. In this paper, however, we discuss yet another crucial problem that has received much less attention, that of the lack of self-averaging and the consequent danger of reducing the number of random realizations as the system size increases. By taking this into account and considering ensembles with a large number of samples for all system sizes analyzed, we find that the generalized dimensions of the eigenstates of the disordered Hei…
We reinvestigate the behavior of the conductivity of several disordered quantum lattice models at infinite temperature using exact diagonalization. Contrary to the conclusion drawn in a recent investigation of similar quantities in identical systems, we find evidence of a localized regime for strong random fields. We estimate the location of the critical field for the many-body localization transition for the random-field XXZ spin chain, and compare our findings with recent investigations in related systems.
We generalize Page's result on the entanglement entropy of random pure states to the many-body eigenstates of realistic disordered many-body systems subject to long range interactions. This extension leads to two principal conclusions: first, for increasing disorder the "shells" of constant energy supporting a system's eigenstates fill only a fraction of its full Fock space and are subject to intrinsic correlations absent in synthetic high-dimensional random lattice systems. Second, in all regimes preceding the many-body localization transition individual eigenstates are thermally distributed …
We construct a solvable spin chain model of many-body localization (MBL) with a tunable mobility edge. This simple model not only demonstrates analytically the existence of mobility edges in interacting one-dimensional (1D) disordered systems, but also allows us to study their physics. By establishing a connection between MBL and a quantum central limit theorem (QCLT), we show that many-body localization-delocalization transitions can be visualized as tuning a mobility edge in the energy spectrum. Since the effective disorder strength for individual eigenstates depends on energy density, we id…
We use an external spin as a dynamical probe of many body localization. The probe spin is coupled to an interacting and disordered environment described by a Heisenberg spin chain in a random field. The spin-chain environment can be tuned between a thermalizing delocalized phase and non-thermalizing localized phase, both in its ground- and high-energy states. We study the decoherence of the probe spin when it couples to the environment prepared in three states: the ground state, the infinite temperature state and a high energy Néel state. In the non-thermalizing many body localized regime, the…
