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arXiv:1607.08611 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Logarithmic entanglement lightcone in many-body localized systems

Dong‐Ling Deng, Xiaopeng Li, J. H. Pixley, Yang-Le Wu, S. Das Sarma

Published Jan 10, 2017• 49 citations
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Abstract

We theoretically study the response of a many-body localized system to a local quench from a quantum information perspective. We find that the local quench triggers entanglement growth throughout the whole system, giving rise to a logarithmic lightcone. This saturates the modified Lieb-Robinson bound for quantum information propagation in many-body localized systems previously conjectured based on the existence of local integrals of motion. In addition, near the localization-delocalization transition, we find that the final states after the local quench exhibit volume-law entanglement. We also show that the local quench induces a deterministic orthogonality catastrophe for highly excited eigenstates, where the typical wave-function overlap between the pre- and postquench eigenstates decays exponentially with the system size.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.95.024202

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•Aug 3, 2016•10 citations
We theoretically study the response of a many-body localized system to a local quench from a quantum information perspective. We find that the local quench triggers entanglement growth throughout the whole system, giving rise to a logarithmic lightcone. This saturates the modified Lieb-Robinson bound for quantum information propagation in many-body localized systems previously conjectured based on the existence of local integrals of motion. In addition, near the localization-delocalization transition, we find that the final states after the local quench exhibit volume-law entanglement. We also show that the local quench induces a deterministic orthogonality catastrophe for highly excited eigenstates, where the typical wave-function overlap between the pre- and postquench eigenstates decays exponentially with the system size.
Dynamics of many-body localized systems: logarithmic lightcones and log⁡ t\log \, tlogt-law of ααα-Rényi entropies
In the context of the Many-Body-Localization phenomenology we consider arbitrarily large one-dimensional local spin systems, the XXZ model with random magnetic field is a prototypical example. Without assuming the existence of exponentially localized integrals of motion (LIOM), but assuming instead that the system's dynamics gives rise to a Lieb-Robinson bound (L-R) with a logarithmic lightcone, we rigorously evaluate the dynamical generation, starting from a generic product state, of $ α$-Rényi entropies, with $ α$ close to one, obtaining a log⁡ t\log \, tlogt-law, that denotes a slow spread of entanglement. This is in sharp contrast with Anderson localized phases that show no dynamically generated entanglement. To prove this result we apply a general theory recently developed by us in arXiv:2408.00743 that quantitatively relates the L-R bounds of a local Hamiltonian with the dynamical generation of entanglement. Assuming instead the existence of LIOM we provide new independent proofs of the known facts that the L-R bound of the system's dynamics has a logarithmic lightcone and show that the dynamical generation of the von Neumann entropy has for large times a $ \log \, t$-shape. L-R bounds, that quantify the dynamical spreading of local operators, may be easier to measure in experiments in comparison to global quantities such as entanglement.
We consider the variation of von Neumann entropy of subsystem reduced states of general many-body lattice spin systems due to local quantum quenches. We obtain Lieb-Robinson-like bounds that are independent of the subsystem volume. The main assumptions are that the Hamiltonian satisfies a Lieb-Robinson bound and that the volume of spheres on the lattice grows at most exponentially with their radius. More specifically, the bound exponentially increases with time but exponentially decreases with the distance between the subsystem and the region where the quench takes place. The fact that the bound is independent of the subsystem volume leads to stronger constraints (than previously known) on the propagation of information throughout many-body systems. In particular, it shows that bipartite entanglement satisfies an effective ``light cone,'' regardless of system size. Further implications to ttt density-matrix renormalization-group simulations of quantum spin chains and limitations to the propagation of information are discussed.
We propose to define full many-body localization in terms of the recently introduced integrals of motion[Chandran et al., arXiv:1407.8480], which characterize the time-averaged response of the system to a local perturbation. The quasi-locality of such integrals of motion implies an effective lightcone that grows logarithmically in time. This subsequently implies that (i) the average entanglement entropy can grow at most logarithmically in time for a global quench from a product state, and (ii) with high probability, the time evolution of a local operator for a time interval ∣t∣|t|∣t∣ can be classically simulated with a resource that scales polynomially in ∣t∣|t|∣t∣.
Effective light cones, characterized by Lieb-Robinson bounds, emerge in nonrelativistic local quantum systems. Here, we present several analytical results derived from logarithmic light cones (LLCs). Possible origins of LLCs include the one-dimensional (1D) disordered XXZ model and a phenomenological model of many-body localization (MBL). In the LLC regime, we prove that, for arbitrary spatial dimensions and any initial pure state, entanglement growth is upper bounded by logarithmic time with an additional subleading double-logarithmic correction---arising from a real asymptotic solution of the Lambert W function---valid up to the asymptotic time limit. In the context of the 1D disordered XXZ model, this result resolves the ambiguity in distinguishing between logarithmic and power-law fits of entanglement growth in numerical studies; we also propose a falsifiable phenomenological functional form for the entanglement growth that agrees with existing numerical results. We show that information scrambling is logarithmically slow in the LLC regime. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the LLC supports long-lived quantum memories---quantum codes with macroscopic code distance and lifetimes that scale exponentially with system size---under unitary time evolution. Our analytical results provide benchmarks for future numerical studies of the MBL regime at large timescales.
Many-body localization was proven under realistic assumptions by constructing a quasi-local unitary rotation that diagonalizes the Hamiltonian (Imbrie, 2016). A natural generalization is to consider all unitaries that have a similar structure. We bound entanglement for states generated by such unitaries, thus providing an independent proof of area law in eigenstates of many-body localized systems. An error of approximating the unitary by a finite-depth local circuit is obtained. We connect the defined family of unitaries to other results about many-body localization (Kim et al, 2014), in particular Lieb-Robinson bound. Finally we argue that any Hamiltonian can be diagonalized by such a unitary, given it has a slow enough logarithmic lightcone in its Lieb-Robinson bound.
In many-body localized systems, propagation of information forms a light cone that grows logarithmically with time. However, local changes in energy or other conserved quantities are expected to spread only within a finite distance. Is it possible to detect the logarithmic light cone using local observables, starting from thermal states or eigenstates? Here we show that this is indeed the case, but only in an out-of-time-ordered way. In particular, we numerically calculate various correlators in a prototypical model of many-body localization. While correlators of local operators A(t=0)A(t=0)A(t=0) and B(t>0)B(t>0)B(t>0) ordered in time sequence -- e.g., A(t=0)B(t>0)A(t=0)B(t>0)A(t=0)B(t>0) -- are not sensitive to the unbounded information propagation, those with out-of-time order -- e.g., A(t=0)B(t>0)A(t=0)B(t>0)A(t=0)B(t>0)A(t=0)B(t>0)A(t=0)B(t>0)A(t=0)B(t>0) -- can detect the logarithmic light cone. We demonstrate the connection between out-of-time-ordered correlators and the Lieb-Robinson bound in many-body localized systems, and explain how to saturate the latter by measuring the involved commutator on specially designed initial states. Moreover, out-of-time-ordered correlators also allow us to study the temperature dependence of the light cones and we observe an increase of propagation velocity with increasing temperature.