The transition between many-body localized states and the delocalized thermal states is an eigen-state phase transition at finite energy density outside the scope of conventional quantum statistical mechanics. In this work we investigate the properties of the transition by studying the behavior of the entanglement entropy of a subsystem of size
LA in a system of size
L>LA near the critical regime of the many-body localization transition. The many-body eigenstates are obtained by exact diagonalization of a disordered quantum spin chain under twisted boundary conditions to reduce the finite-size effect. We present a scaling theory based on the assumption that the transition is continuous and use the subsystem size
LA/ξ as the scaling variable, where
ξ is the correlation length. We show that this scaling theory provides an effective description of the critical behavior and that the entanglement entropy follows the thermal volume law at the transition point. We extract the critical exponent governing the divergence of
ξ upon approaching the transition point. We also study the participation entropy in the spin-basis of the domain wall excitations and show that the transition point and the critical exponent agree with those obtained from finite size scaling of the entanglement entropy. Our findings suggest that the many-body localization transition in this model is continuous and describable as a localization transition in the many-body configuration space.
Abstract To understand the finite-size-scaling properties of phases transitions in classical and quantum models in the presence of quenched disorder, it has proven to be fruitful to introduce the notion of a finite-size-pseudo-critical point in each disordered sample and to analyze its sample-to-sample fluctuations as a function of the size. For the many-body-localization transition, where very strong eigenstate-to-eigenstate fluctuations have been numerically reported even within a given disordered sample at a given energy density (Yu, Luitz and Clark 2016 arXiv: 1606.01260 and Khemani, Lim, Sheng and Huse 2016 arXiv: 1607.05756 ), it seems thus useful to introduce the notion of a finite-size-pseudo-critical point for each individual eigenstate and to study its eigenstate-to-eigenstate fluctuations governed by the correlation length exponent ν . The scaling properties of critical eigenstates are also expected to appear much more clearly if one considers each eigenstate at its finite-size-pseudo-critical point, where it is ‘truly critical’, while standard averages over eigenstates and samples in the critical region actually see a mixture of states that are effectively either localized or delocalized.
Many-body localization occurs in isolated quantum systems when Anderson localization persists in the presence of finite interactions. Despite strong evidence for the existence of a many-body localization transition, a reliable extraction of the critical disorder strength is difficult due to a large drift with system size in the studied quantities. In this Letter, we explore two entanglement properties that are promising for the study of the many-body localization transition: the variance of the half-chain entanglement entropy of exact eigenstates and the long time change in entanglement after a local quench from an exact eigenstate. We investigate these quantities in a disordered quantum Ising chain and use them to estimate the critical disorder strength and its energy dependence. In addition, we analyze a spin-glass transition at large disorder strength and provide evidence for it being a separate transition. We, thereby, give numerical support for a recently proposed phase diagram of many-body localization with localization protected quantum order [Huse et al., Phys. Rev. B 88, 014206 (2013).
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).
Isolated quantum systems at strong disorder can display many-body localization (MBL), a remarkable phenomena characterized by an absence of conduction even at finite temperatures. As the ratio of interactions to disorder is increased, one expects that an MBL phase will eventually undergo a dynamical phase transition to a delocalized phase. Here we constrain the nature of such a transition by exploiting the strong subadditivity of entanglement entropy, as applied to the many-body eigenstates close to the transition in general dimensions. In particular, we show that at a putative continuous transition between an MBL and an ergodic delocalized phase, the critical eigenstates are necessarily thermal, and therefore, the critical entanglement entropy equals the thermal entropy. We also explore a qualitatively different continuous localization-delocalization transition, where the delocalized phase is non-ergodic whose volume law entanglement entropy tends to zero as the transition is approached.
We treat the disordered Heisenberg model in one dimension as the standard model of many-body localization (MBL). Two new and independent order parameters stemming solely from the half-chain von Neumann entanglement entropy
SvN are introduced to probe the eigenstate phase transition in this model. From the symmetry-endowed entropy decomposition, they are the probability distribution deviation
∣d(pn)∣ and the von Neumann entropy
SvNn(Dn=max) of the maximally dimensional symmetry subdivision. The finite-size scaling reveals that the probability set
pn drives the localization transition, preceded by a thermalization breakdown transition governed by
SvNn. For the noninteracting case, these transitions coincide, but in the interacting circumstance, they separate. Such separability creates an intermediate phase regime and discriminates between the Anderson and MBL transitions. One obstacle whose solution eludes the community to date concerns the violation of the Harris criterion in most numerical investigations of MBL. Upon elucidating the mutually independent measures comprising
SvN, it becomes clear that the previous studies may lack the resolution to pinpoint, and thus potentially overlook, the crucial internal structure of the transition. We show that after this necessary decomposition, the universal critical exponents for both transitions of
∣d(pn)∣ and
SvNn(Dn=max) fulfill the Harris criterion: $\ensuremath{\nu}\ensuremath{\approx}2\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}(\ensuremath{\nu}\ensuremath{\approx}1.5)$ for quench (quasirandom) disorder. Our work puts forth symmetry combined with entanglement as an organization principle for the generic eigenstate matter and phase transition.