The many-body localization transition (MBLT) between ergodic and many-body localized phases in disordered interacting systems is a subject of much recent interest. The statistics of eigenenergies is known to be a powerful probe of crossovers between ergodic and integrable systems in simpler examples of quantum chaos. We consider the evolution of the spectral statistics across the MBLT, starting with mapping to a Brownian motion process that analytically relates the spectral properties to the statistics of matrix elements. We demonstrate that the flow from Wigner-Dyson to Poisson statistics is a two-stage process. First, a fractal enhancement of matrix elements upon approaching the MBLT from the delocalized side produces an effective power-law interaction between energy levels, and leads to a plasma model for level statistics. At the second stage, the gas of eigenvalues has local interactions and the level statistics belongs to a semi-Poisson universality class. We verify our findings numerically on the XXZ spin chain. We provide a microscopic understanding of the level statistics across the MBLT and discuss implications for the transition that are strong constraints on possible theories.
The many-body localization transition (MBLT) between ergodic and many-body localized phases in disordered interacting systems is a subject of much recent interest. The statistics of eigenenergies is known to be a powerful probe of crossovers between ergodic and integrable systems in simpler examples of quantum chaos. We consider the evolution of the spectral statistics across the MBLT, starting with mapping to a Brownian motion process that analytically relates the spectral properties to the statistics of matrix elements. We demonstrate that the flow from Wigner-Dyson to Poisson statistics is a two-stage process. First, a fractal enhancement of matrix elements upon approaching the MBLT from the delocalized side produces an effective power-law interaction between energy levels, and leads to a plasma model for level statistics. At the second stage, the gas of eigenvalues has local interactions and the level statistics belongs to a semi-Poisson universality class. We verify our findings numerically on the XXZ spin chain. We provide a microscopic understanding of the level statistics across the MBLT and discuss implications for the transition that are strong constraints on possible theories.
We numerically study level statistics of disordered interacting quantum many-body systems. A two-parameter plasma model which controls the level repulsion exponent $\ensuremath{\beta}$ and range h of interactions between eigenvalues is shown to reproduce accurately features of level statistics across the transition from the ergodic to many-body localized phase. Analysis of higher-order spacing ratios indicates that the considered $\ensuremath{\beta}\ensuremath{-}h$ model accounts even for long-range spectral correlations and allows us to obtain a clear picture of the flow of level statistics across the transition. Comparing the spectral form factors of the $\ensuremath{\beta}\ensuremath{-}h$ model and of a system across the ergodic-many-body-localized transition, we show that the range of effective interactions between eigenvalues h is related to the Thouless time which marks the onset of quantum chaotic behavior of the system. Analysis of level statistics of the random quantum circuit which hosts chaotic and localized phases supports the claim that the $\ensuremath{\beta}\ensuremath{-}h$ model grasps universal features of level statistics in transition between ergodic and many-body-localized phases also for systems breaking time-reversal invariance.
The space of one-dimensional disordered interacting quantum models displaying a many-body localization (MBL) transition seems sufficiently rich to produce critical points with level statistics interpolating continuously between the Poisson statistics of the localized phase and the Wigner–Dyson statistics of the delocalized phase. In this paper, we consider the strong disorder limit of the MBL transition, where the level statistics at the MBL critical point is close to the Poisson statistics. We analyze a one-dimensional quantum spin model, in order to determine the statistical properties of the rare extensive resonances that are needed to destabilize the MBL phase. At criticality, we find that the entanglement entropy can grow with an exponent 0 < α < 1 anywhere between the area law α = 0 and the volume law α = 1 , as a function of the resonances properties, while the entanglement spectrum follows the strong multifractality statistics. In the MBL phase near criticality, we obtain the simple value ν = 1 for the correlation length exponent. Independently of the strong disorder limit, we explain why, for the many-body localization transition concerning individual eigenstates, the correlation length exponent ν is not constrained by the usual Harris inequality ν ≥ 2 / d , so that there is no theoretical inconsistency with the best numerical measure ν = 0 . 8 ( 3 ) obtained by Luitz et al. (2015).
For short-ranged disordered quantum models in one dimension, the Many-Body-Localization is analyzed via the adaptation to the Many-Body context [M. Serbyn, Z. Papic and D.A. Abanin, PRX 5, 041047 (2015)] of the Thouless point of view on the Anderson transition : the question is whether a local interaction between two long chains is able to reshuffle completely the eigenstates (Delocalized phase with a volume-law entanglement) or whether the hybridization between tensor states remains limited (Many-Body-Localized Phase with an area-law entanglement). The central object is thus the level of Hybridization induced by the matrix elements of local operators, as compared with the difference of diagonal energies. The multifractal analysis of these matrix elements of local operators is used to analyze the corresponding statistics of resonances. Our main conclusion is that the critical point is characterized by the Strong-Multifractality Spectrum f(0≤α≤2)=2α, well known in the context of Anderson Localization in spaces of effective infinite dimensionality, where the size of the Hilbert space grows exponentially with the volume. As a consequence, the level statistics at criticality is the closest possible to the Poisson statistics of the Localized phase, and the Delocalized phase near the critical point is not ergodic.
Abstract The generalization of the Dyson Brownian motion approach of random matrices to Anderson localization (AL) models (Chalker et al 1996 Phys. Rev. Lett . 77 554) and to many-body localization (MBL) Hamiltonians (Serbyn and Moore 2015 arXiv:1508.07293) is revisited to extract the level repulsion exponent β , where in the delocalized phase governed by the Wigner–Dyson statistics, , in the localized phase governed by the Poisson statistics, and at the critical point. The idea is that the Gaussian disorder variables h i are promoted to Gaussian stationary processes h i ( t ) in order to sample the disorder stationary distribution with some time correlation τ . The statistics of energy levels can then be studied via Langevin and Fokker–Planck equations. For the MBL quantum spin Hamiltonian with random fields h i , we obtain in terms of the Edwards–Anderson matrix for the same eigenstate m = n and for consecutive eigenstates m = n + 1. For the Anderson localization tight-binding Hamiltonian with random on-site energies h i , we find in terms of the density correlation matrix for consecutive eigenstates m = n + 1, while the diagonal element m = n corresponds to the inverse participation ratio of the eigenstate .
We study spectral and wave-function statistics for many-body localization transition in systems with long-range interactions decaying as $1/{r}^{\ensuremath{\alpha}}$ with an exponent $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ satisfying $d\ensuremath{\le}\ensuremath{\alpha}\ensuremath{\le}2d$, where d is the spatial dimensionality. We refine earlier arguments and show that the system undergoes a localization transition as a function of the rescaled disorder ${W}^{*}=W/{L}^{2d\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\alpha}}lnL$, where W is the disorder strength and L the system size. This transition has much in common with that on random regular graphs. We further perform a detailed analysis of the inverse participation ratio (IPR) of many-body wave functions, exploring how ergodic behavior in the delocalized phase switches to fractal one at the critical point and on the localized side of the transition. Our analytical results for the scaling of the critical disorder W with the system size L and for the scaling of IPR in the delocalized and localized phases are supported and corroborated by exact diagonalization of spin chains.
We study a one-dimensional XXZ spin chain in a random field on the metallic side of the many-body localization transition by level statistics. For a fixed interaction, and intermediate disorder below the many-body localization transition, we find that, asymptotically, the number variance grows faster than linear with a disorder-dependent exponent. This is consistent with the existence of an anomalous Thouless energy in the spectrum. In noninteracting disordered metals, this is an energy scale related to the typical time for a particle to diffuse across the sample. In the interacting case, it seems related to a more intricate anomalous diffusion process. This interpretation is not fully consistent with recent claims that for intermediate disorder, level statistics are described by a plasma model with power-law decaying interactions whose number variance grows slower than linear. As disorder is further increased, still on the metallic side, the Thouless energy is gradually washed out. In the range of sizes we can explore, level statistics are scale invariant and approach Poisson statistics at the many-body localization transition. Slightly below the many-body localization transition, spectral correlations, well described by critical statistics, are quantitatively similar to those of a high-dimensional, noninteracting, disordered conductor at the Anderson transition.