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arXiv:1506.07284 · Physical Review B

Spin and thermal conductivity in a classical disordered spin chain

Boštjan Jenčič, Peter Prelovšek

Published Oct 13, 2015• 20 citations
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Abstract

The transport quantities of a classical spin chain with quenched disorder in antiferromagnetic coupling ${J}_{i}$ are evaluated using a dynamical simulation at finite temperatures $T>0$. Since the classical model is nonintegrable, spin and thermal conductivities remain finite even in the pure case. On the other hand, the role of disorder becomes crucial at low $T$, leading to a vanishing transport due to Anderson localization within the linearized regime. The crossover from the insulator to the conductor appears both for spin and thermal transport at quite low ${T}^{*}\ensuremath{\ll}J$. Still the many-body localization regime at $T>0$ evidenced by extremely short mean free paths can be strongly enhanced by introducing into the model an additional staggered field.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.92.134305

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Using numerical diagonalization techniques, we explore the effect of local and bond disorder on the finite-temperature spin and thermal conductivities of the one-dimensional anisotropic spin-1/2 Heisenberg model. High-temperature results for local disorder show that the dc conductivities are finite, apart from the uncorrelated XYXYXY case where dc transport vanishes. Moreover, at strong disorder, we find finite dc conductivities at all temperatures TTT except at T=0T=0T=0. The low-frequency conductivities are characterized by a nonanalytic cusp shape. Similar behavior is found for bond disorder.
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We study the spin transport properties of some disordered spin chains with a special focus on the distribution of the frequency-dependent spin conductivity. In the cases of interest here, the systems are governed by an effectively infinite disorder at low energies. A hallmark of this behavior is the wide discrepancy between the average and the typical values of some physical quantities, which are described by extremely broad distributions. We show that such is also the case of the spin conductivity, whose average value is metallic but whose typical one, the physically relevant quantity, is insulating. This solves the apparent contradiction between the prediction of a spin metallic phase of the spin-1/2 disordered XX chain and its known localized behavior (after a mapping to free fermions). Our results are based on analytical and numerical implementations of a strong-disorder renormalization group as well as exact diagonalization studies. We present our analyses in very general terms, valid for systems of any spin SSS value, but the cases of S=1/2S=1/2S=1/2 and 1 are studied in greater detail.
We study spin transport in the one-dimensional anisotropic S=1S=1S=1 Heisenberg model. Particular emphasis is given to dynamics at infinite temperature, where current autocorrelations and spatiotemporal correlation functions are obtained by means of an efficient pure-state approach based on the concept of typicality. Our comprehensive numerical analysis unveils that high-temperature spin transport is diffusive in the easy-axis regime for strong exchange anisotropies. This finding is based on the combination of numerous signatures, such as (i) Gaussian spreading of correlations, (ii) a time-independent diffusion coefficient, (iii) power-law decay of equal-site correlations, (iv) exponentially decaying long-wavelength modes, and (v) Lorentzian line shapes of the dynamical structure factor. Moreover, we provide evidence that some of these signatures are not exclusively restricted to the infinite-temperature limit but can persist at lower temperatures as well, where we complement our results by additional quantum Monte Carlo simulations of large systems. In contrast to the easy-axis regime, we show that in the case of an isotropic chain, the signatures (i)--(v) are much less pronounced or even entirely absent, suggesting the existence of anomalous spin transport despite the nonintegrability of the model. Eventually, upon introducing a random on-site magnetic field, we observe a breakdown of diffusion and distinctly slower dynamics. In particular, our results exhibit qualitative similarities to disordered spin-1/21/21/2 chains and might be consistent with the onset of many-body localization in the S=1S=1S=1 model for sufficiently strong disorder.
We study the disordered Heisenberg spin chain, which exhibits many-body localization at strong disorder, in the weak to moderate disorder regime. A continued fraction calculation of dynamical correlations is devised, using a variational extrapolation of recurrents. Good convergence for the infinite chain limit is shown. We find that the local spin correlations decay at long times as $C\ensuremath{\sim}{t}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\beta}}$, whereas the conductivity exhibits a low-frequency power law $\ensuremath{\sigma}\ensuremath{\sim}{\ensuremath{\omega}}^{\ensuremath{\alpha}}$. The exponents depict subdiffusive behavior $\ensuremath{\beta}<1/2,\phantom{\rule{0.28em}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\alpha}>0$ at all finite disorders and convergence to the scaling result $\ensuremath{\alpha}+2\ensuremath{\beta}=1$ at large disorders.