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arXiv:1509.06786 · Physical Review B

Many-body localization and mobility edge in a disordered spin- 12 Heisenberg ladder

Elliott Baygan, S. P. Lim, D. N. Sheng

Published Nov 30, 2015• 51 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We examine the interplay of interaction and disorder for a Heisenberg spin-1/2 ladder system with random fields. We identify many-body localized states based on the entanglement entropy scaling, where delocalized and localized states have volume and area laws, respectively. We first establish the dynamic phase transition at a critical random field strength ${h}_{c}\ensuremath{\sim}8.5\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.5$, where all energy eigenstates are localized beyond that value. Interestingly, the entanglement entropy and fluctuations of the bipartite magnetization show distinct probability distributions which characterize different phases. Furthermore, we show that for weaker $h$, energy eigenstates with higher-energy density are delocalized while states at lower-energy density are localized, which defines a mobility edge separating these two phases. With increasing disorder strength, the mobility edge moves towards higher-energy density, which drives the system to the phase of the full many-body localization.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.92.195153

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•Apr 17, 2021•1 citation
We examine the interplay of interaction and disorder for a Heisenberg spin-1/2 ladder system with random fields. We identify many-body localized states based on the entanglement entropy scaling, where delocalized and localized states have volume and area laws, respectively. We first establish the dynamic phase transition at a critical random field strength hc\ensuremath∼8.5\ifmmode±\else\textpm\fi0.5{h}_{c}\ensuremath{\sim}8.5\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.5hc​\ensuremath∼8.5\ifmmode±\else\textpm\fi0.5, where all energy eigenstates are localized beyond that value. Interestingly, the entanglement entropy and fluctuations of the bipartite magnetization show distinct probability distributions which characterize different phases. Furthermore, we show that for weaker hhh, energy eigenstates with higher-energy density are delocalized while states at lower-energy density are localized, which defines a mobility edge separating these two phases. With increasing disorder strength, the mobility edge moves towards higher-energy density, which drives the system to the phase of the full many-body localization.
Many-body localization (MBL) is an intriguing physical phenomenon that arises from the interplay of interaction and disorder, allowing quantum systems to prevent thermalization. In this study, we investigate the MBL properties of the fully frustrated Heisenberg spin-1/2 ladder model with next-nearest-neighbor hopping interaction along the leg direction and compare it with the Heisenberg spin-1/2 single-chain model with next-nearest-neighbor hopping interaction. We explore the MBL transition using random matrix theory and study the characteristics of entanglement entropy and its variance. Our results show that for the single-chain model, the critical point w1∼w _{1} \simw1​∼ 7.5 ±\pm± 0.5, whereas for the frustrated ladder model, w2∼w _{2} \simw2​∼ 10.5 ±\pm± 0.5. Moreover, we observe the existence of a many-body mobility edge in the frustrated ladder model. We also investigate the dynamical properties of the frustrated ladder model and identify the logarithmic growth of entanglement entropy, high fidelity of initial information, and magnetic localization phenomenon in the localized phase. Finally, we explore the finite-size scaling of the two models. Our findings suggest that interpreting MBL transition as a continuous second-order phase transition yields a better scaling solution than the Kosterlitz-Thouless type transition for our two models, and this difference is more pronounced in the frustrated ladder model compared with the single-chain model.
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 identify "energy-resolved disorder strength" as a physical mechanism for the appearance of mobility edges, and support the universality of this mechanism by arguing its presence in a large class of models including the random-field Heisenberg chain. We also construct models with multiple mobility edges. All our constructions can be made translationally invariant.
We investigate the occurrence of many-body localization (MBL) on a spin-1/2 transverse-field Ising model defined on a Chimera connectivity graph with random exchange interactions and longitudinal fields. We observe a transition from an ergodic phase to a nonthermal phase for individual energy eigenstates induced by a critical disorder strength for the Ising parameters. Our result follows from the analysis of both the mean half-system block entanglement and the energy-level statistics. We identify the critical point associated with this transition using the maximum variance of the block entanglement over the disorder ensemble as a function of the disorder strength. The calculated energy density phase diagram shows the existence of a mobility edge in the energy spectrum. In terms of the energy-level statistics, the system changes from the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble for weak disorder to a Poisson distribution limit for strong randomness, which implies localization behavior. We then realize the time-independent disordered Ising Hamiltonian experimentally using a reverse annealing quench-pause-quench protocol on a D\mathrm{D}D-wave 2000Q programmable quantum annealer. We characterize the transition from the thermal to the localized phase through magnetization measurements at the end of the annealing dynamics, and the results are compatible with our theoretical prediction for the critical point. However, the same behavior can be reproduced using a classical spin-vector Monte Carlo simulation, which suggests that genuine quantum signatures of the phase transition remain out of reach using this experimental platform and protocol.
We investigate many-body localization of interacting spinless fermions in a one-dimensional disordered and tilted lattice. The fermions undergo energy-dependent transitions from ergodic to Stark many-body localization driven by the tilted potential, which are manifested by the appearance of mobility edges between delocalized states and Stark many-body localized states even when the disorder is weak. We can concretely diagnose these transitions rather than crossovers by finite-size scaling of energy-level statistics. Moreover, in the Stark many-body localization, the entanglement entropy obeys the area law scaling, in analogy to that in the conventional many-body localization.
We study many-body localization (MBL) in an interacting one-dimensional system with a deterministic aperiodic potential. Below the threshold potential h<hch<{h}_{c}h<hc​, the noninteracting system has single particle mobility edges (MEs) at $\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}{E}_{c}$ while for h>hch>{h}_{c}h>hc​ all the single particle states are localized. We demonstrate that even in the presence of single particle MEs, interactions do not always delocalize the system and the interacting system can have MBL. Our numerical calculation of energy level spacing statistics, participation ratio in the Fock space, and Shannon entropy shows that for some regime of particle densities, even for h<hch<{h}_{c}h<hc​, many-body states at the top (with E>E2E>{E}_{2}E>E2​) and the bottom of the spectrum (with E<E1E<{E}_{1}E<E1​) remain localized, though states in the middle of the spectrum are delocalized. Variance of entanglement entropy (EE) also diverges at E1,2{E}_{1,2}E1,2​, indicating a transition from MBL to a delocalized regime, though transitions from volume to area law scaling for EE and from thermal to nonthermal behavior occur inside the MBL regime much below E1{E}_{1}E1​ and above E2{E}_{2}E2​.
Many-body localization of a disorder interacting boson system in one dimension is studied numerically at the filling factor being one-half, in terms of level statistics, local compressibility, correlation function and entanglement entropies. The von Neumann entanglement entropy is decoupled into a particle number entropy and a configuration entropy. An anomalous volume-law behavior is found for the configuration entanglement entropy to confirm a recent experimental observation [A. Lukin, M. Rispoli, R. Schittko, et al., Science 364, 256 (2019)] for sufficient strong disorder, while the particle number entropy fulfills an area-law corresponding to the total entropy for disordered spin chain. The localization length are extracted from a two-body correlation function for many-body localization states and corresponding time-evolutions states as well. A phase diagrams is established with consisting of an ergodic thermalized region and a many-body-localization region in a parameter space of the disorder strength and the energy density. Two regions are separated by a many-body mobility edge deducted from the standard deviation of the particle-number entanglement entropy, which appears consistent with that based on the localization length. Slow dynamics characterized by a logarithmic time-dependence is explicitly shown for both the particle number entropy and the configuration entropy in an intermediate regime of their time-evolutions, which does not show up in the Anderson localization case, i.e. non-interacting disorder systems.