Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:2003.09629 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Anomalous dynamics on the ergodic side of the many-body localization transition and the glassy phase of directed polymers in random media

Giulio Biroli, Marco Tarzia

Published Aug 24, 2020• 40 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Using the noninteracting Anderson tight-binding model on the Bethe lattice as a toy model for the many-body quantum dynamics, we propose a novel and transparent theoretical explanation of the anomalously slow dynamics that emerges in the bad metal phase preceding the many-body localization (MBL) transition. By mapping the time decorrelation of many-body wave functions onto directed polymers in random media, we show the existence of a glass transition within the extended regime of loopless Cayley trees separating a metalliclike phase at small disorder, where delocalization occurs on an exponential number of paths, from a bad metal-like phase at intermediate disorder, where resonances are formed on rare, specific, disorder dependent site orbitals on very distant generations. The physical interpretation of subdiffusion and nonexponential relaxation emerging from this picture is complementary to the Griffiths one, although both scenarios rely on the presence of heavy-tailed distribution of the escape times. We relate the dynamical evolution in the glassy phase to the depinning transition of directed polymers, which results in macroscopic and abrupt jumps of the preferred delocalizing paths when a parameter like the energy is varied, and produce a singular behavior of the overlap correlation function between eigenstates at different energies. By comparing the quantum dynamics on loopless Cayley trees and random regular graphs, we discuss the effect of loops, showing that in the latter slow dynamics and apparent power laws extend on a very large time window but are eventually cutoff on a timescale that diverges at the MBL transition.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.102.064211

Related papers

Delocalized glassy dynamics and many-body localization

Giulio Biroli, Marco Tarzia

We analyze the unusual slow dynamics that emerges in the bad metal delocalized phase preceding the many-body localization transition by using single-particle Anderson localization on the Bethe lattice as a toy model of many-body dynamics in Fock space. We probe the dynamical evolution by measuring observables such as the imbalance and equilibrium correlation functions, which display slow dynamics and power laws strikingly similar to those observed in recent simulations and experiments. We relate this unusual behavior to the nonergodic spectral statistics found on Bethe lattices. We discuss different scenarios, such as a true intermediate phase which persists in the thermodynamic limit versus a glassy regime established on finite but very large time and length scales only, and their implications for real-space dynamical properties. In the latter, slow dynamics and power laws extend on a very large time window but are eventually cut off on a time scale that diverges at the many-body localization transition.

arXiv:1706.02655•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Nov 27, 2017•87 citations

Toy model for anomalous transport and Griffiths effects near the many-body localization transition

Marco Schirò, Marco Tarzia

We introduce and study a toy model for anomalous transport and Griffiths effects in one-dimensional (1D) quantum disordered isolated systems near the many-body localization (MBL) transition. The model is constituted by a collection of 1D tight-binding chains with on-site random energies, locally coupled to a weak perturbation, corresponding to a random matrix which belongs to the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble (GOE) and mimics the effect of thermal inclusions due to delocalizing interactions by providing a local broadening of the Poisson spectrum. While in the absence of such a coupling the model is localized as expected for the one-dimensional Anderson model, increasing the coupling with the GOE perturbation we find a transition to a conducting phase driven by the proliferation of quantum avalanches, which does not fit the standard paradigm of the Anderson transition. In particular an intermediate Griffiths region emerges, where exponentially distributed insulating segments coexist with a few rare resonances. Typical correlations decay exponentially fast, while average correlations decay as stretched exponentials and diverge with the length of the chain, indicating that the conducting inclusions have a fractal structure and that the localization length is broadly distributed at the critical point. This behavior is consistent with a Kosterlitz-Thouless-like criticality of the MBL transition. Transport and relaxation are dominated by rare resonances and rare strong insulating regions, and show anomalous behaviors strikingly similar to those observed in recent simulations and experiments in the bad metal delocalized phase preceding MBL. In particular, we find subdiffusive transport and power-law decay of the return probability at large times, with exponents that gradually change as one moves across the intermediate region. Concomitantly, the ac conductivity vanishes near zero frequency with an anomalous power law.

arXiv:1909.07160•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Jan 17, 2020•15 citations

Large-deviation analysis of rare resonances for the Many-Body localization transition

Giulio Biroli, Alexander K. Hartmann, Marco Tarzia

A central theoretical issue at the core of the current research on many-body localization (MBL) consists in characterizing the statistics of rare long-range resonances in many-body eigenstates. This is of paramount importance to understand: (i) the critical properties of the MBL transition and the mechanism for its destabilization through quantum avalanches; (ii) the unusual transport and anomalously slow out-of-equilibrium relaxation when the transition is approached from the metallic side. In order to study and characterize such long-range rare resonances, we develop a large-deviations approach based on an analogy with the physics of directed polymers in random media, and in particular with their freezing glass transition on infinite-dimensional graphs. The basic idea is to enlarge the parameter space by adding an auxiliary parameter (which plays the role of the inverse temperature in the directed polymer formulation) which allows us to fine-tune the effect of anomalously large outliers in the far-tails of the probability distributions of the transmission amplitudes between far-away many-body configurations in the Hilbert space. We first benchmark our approach onto two non-interacting paradigmatic toy models, namely the single-particle Anderson model on the (loop-less) Cayley tree and the Rosenzweig-Porter random matrix ensemble, and then apply it to the study of a class of disordered quantum spin chains in a transverse field. This analysis shows the existence of a broad disorder range in which rare, long-distance resonances, that may form only for a few specific realizations of the disorder and a few specific choice of the random initial state, destabilize the MBL phase, while the genuine MBL transition is shifted to much larger values of the disorder than originally thought.

arXiv:2312.14873•Dec 22, 2023•0 citations

Anderson localization on the Bethe lattice

Dafne Prado Bandeira, Angelica Vecchiarelli, Marco Tarzia

Anderson localization - the suppression of wave propagation by interference in a sufficiently disordered medium - is one of the most remarkable phenomena in condensed matter physics. These lecture notes provide a pedagogical introduction to Anderson localization on the Bethe lattice, an infinite tree with fixed connectivity and no loops, and one of the few settings in which the transition can be studied exactly. The problem is important for two main reasons. First, the Anderson model on the Bethe lattice provides a mean-field, infinite-dimensional limit in which the transition point and critical behavior can be determined exactly. Second, it provides a simplified description of the high-dimensional configuration spaces of interacting quantum systems, and thus a useful toy model for many-body localization. We focus on the Green's function formalism and the cavity method. After recalling standard diagnostics of localization based on transport, spectral statistics, and eigenfunction moments, we show that they are encoded in the statistics of the Green's functions, and that the full distribution of the local density of states is the natural order parameter of the transition. We derive the exact self-consistent cavity equations on the Bethe lattice, use them to characterize the two phases and critical behavior - including an analytic solution at large connectivity - and describe population-dynamics algorithms that solve them with high precision. We explain how an exponentially large correlation volume and the localized nature of the critical point account for the strong finite-size effects on random regular graphs, which led to a long debate over a possible intermediate non-ergodic phase. Finally, we discuss the mapping onto directed polymers in random media, interpreting localization as a freezing transition dominated by a few rare resonant paths.

arXiv:2606.24671•Jun 23, 2026•0 citations

Large deviations in the many-body localization transition: The case of the random-field XXZ chain

Greivin Alfaro Miranda, Fabien Alet, Giulio Biroli +3 more

The effect of rare system-wide resonances in the many-body localization (MBL) transition has recently attracted significant attention. They are expected to play a prominent role in the stability of the MBL phase, prompting the development of new theoretical frameworks to properly account for their statistical weight. We employ a method based on an analogy with mean-field disordered glassy systems to characterize the statistics of transmission amplitudes between distant many-body configurations in Hilbert space, and apply it to the random-field XXZ spin chain. By introducing a Lagrange multiplier, which formally plays the role of an effective temperature controlling the influence of extreme outliers in the heavy-tailed distribution of propagators, we identify three distinct regimes: (i) an ergodic phase with uniform spreading in Hilbert space, (ii) an intermediate regime where delocalization is driven by rare, disorder-dependent long-range resonances, and (iii) a robust MBL phase where such resonances cannot destabilize localization. We derive a finite-size phase diagram in the disorder--interaction plane both in the spin and in the Anderson basis that quantitatively agrees with recent numerical results based on real-space spin-spin correlation functions. We further demonstrate that even infinitesimal interactions can destroy the Anderson insulator at finite disorder, with the critical disorder remaining finite down to small interaction strengths. By visualizing resonant transmission pathways on the Hilbert space graph, we provide a complementary perspective to real-space and spectral probes, revealing how the destabilization of the MBL phase at finite sizes stems from the emergence of resonant paths that become progressively rarer and shorter-ranged deep in the localized phase.

arXiv:2510.18545•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Jul 10, 2026•1 citation

Anderson localization and ergodicity on random regular graphs

Konstantin S. Tikhonov, A. D. Mirlin, M. A. Skvortsov

A disordered quantum system can be driven, e.g., by increasing disorder, through the Anderson transition between a delocalized and localized phase. Recently, Anderson localization on treelike graphs has attracted much attention in view of its connections with problems of many-body localization. One of the central questions in this context is that of ergodicity of eigenstates. The authors of this paper perform a numerical study of Anderson transition on random regular graphs (RRGs) with diagonal disorder. The problem can be described as a tight-binding model on a lattice with $N$ sites that is locally a tree with constant connectivity. Focusing on the delocalized side of the transition, they show that the data can be interpreted in terms of the finite-size crossover from a small ($N\ensuremath{\ll}{N}_{c}$) to a large ($N\ensuremath{\gg}{N}_{c}$) system, where ${N}_{c}$ is the correlation volume diverging exponentially at the transition. A distinct feature of this crossover is a nonmonotonicity of the spectral and wave-function statistics, which is related to properties of the critical phase in the studied model and renders the finite-size analysis highly nontrivial. The results support an analytical prediction that states in the delocalized phase (and at $N\ensuremath{\gg}{N}_{c}$) are ergodic.

arXiv:1604.05353•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Dec 22, 2016•167 citations
Using the noninteracting Anderson tight-binding model on the Bethe lattice as a toy model for the many-body quantum dynamics, we propose a novel and transparent theoretical explanation of the anomalously slow dynamics that emerges in the bad metal phase preceding the many-body localization (MBL) transition. By mapping the time decorrelation of many-body wave functions onto directed polymers in random media, we show the existence of a glass transition within the extended regime of loopless Cayley trees separating a metalliclike phase at small disorder, where delocalization occurs on an exponential number of paths, from a bad metal-like phase at intermediate disorder, where resonances are formed on rare, specific, disorder dependent site orbitals on very distant generations. The physical interpretation of subdiffusion and nonexponential relaxation emerging from this picture is complementary to the Griffiths one, although both scenarios rely on the presence of heavy-tailed distribution of the escape times. We relate the dynamical evolution in the glassy phase to the depinning transition of directed polymers, which results in macroscopic and abrupt jumps of the preferred delocalizing paths when a parameter like the energy is varied, and produce a singular behavior of the overlap correlation function between eigenstates at different energies. By comparing the quantum dynamics on loopless Cayley trees and random regular graphs, we discuss the effect of loops, showing that in the latter slow dynamics and apparent power laws extend on a very large time window but are eventually cutoff on a timescale that diverges at the MBL transition.
We analyze the unusual slow dynamics that emerges in the bad metal delocalized phase preceding the many-body localization transition by using single-particle Anderson localization on the Bethe lattice as a toy model of many-body dynamics in Fock space. We probe the dynamical evolution by measuring observables such as the imbalance and equilibrium correlation functions, which display slow dynamics and power laws strikingly similar to those observed in recent simulations and experiments. We relate this unusual behavior to the nonergodic spectral statistics found on Bethe lattices. We discuss different scenarios, such as a true intermediate phase which persists in the thermodynamic limit versus a glassy regime established on finite but very large time and length scales only, and their implications for real-space dynamical properties. In the latter, slow dynamics and power laws extend on a very large time window but are eventually cut off on a time scale that diverges at the many-body localization transition.
We introduce and study a toy model for anomalous transport and Griffiths effects in one-dimensional (1D) quantum disordered isolated systems near the many-body localization (MBL) transition. The model is constituted by a collection of 1D tight-binding chains with on-site random energies, locally coupled to a weak perturbation, corresponding to a random matrix which belongs to the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble (GOE) and mimics the effect of thermal inclusions due to delocalizing interactions by providing a local broadening of the Poisson spectrum. While in the absence of such a coupling the model is localized as expected for the one-dimensional Anderson model, increasing the coupling with the GOE perturbation we find a transition to a conducting phase driven by the proliferation of quantum avalanches, which does not fit the standard paradigm of the Anderson transition. In particular an intermediate Griffiths region emerges, where exponentially distributed insulating segments coexist with a few rare resonances. Typical correlations decay exponentially fast, while average correlations decay as stretched exponentials and diverge with the length of the chain, indicating that the conducting inclusions have a fractal structure and that the localization length is broadly distributed at the critical point. This behavior is consistent with a Kosterlitz-Thouless-like criticality of the MBL transition. Transport and relaxation are dominated by rare resonances and rare strong insulating regions, and show anomalous behaviors strikingly similar to those observed in recent simulations and experiments in the bad metal delocalized phase preceding MBL. In particular, we find subdiffusive transport and power-law decay of the return probability at large times, with exponents that gradually change as one moves across the intermediate region. Concomitantly, the ac conductivity vanishes near zero frequency with an anomalous power law.
A central theoretical issue at the core of the current research on many-body localization (MBL) consists in characterizing the statistics of rare long-range resonances in many-body eigenstates. This is of paramount importance to understand: (i) the critical properties of the MBL transition and the mechanism for its destabilization through quantum avalanches; (ii) the unusual transport and anomalously slow out-of-equilibrium relaxation when the transition is approached from the metallic side. In order to study and characterize such long-range rare resonances, we develop a large-deviations approach based on an analogy with the physics of directed polymers in random media, and in particular with their freezing glass transition on infinite-dimensional graphs. The basic idea is to enlarge the parameter space by adding an auxiliary parameter (which plays the role of the inverse temperature in the directed polymer formulation) which allows us to fine-tune the effect of anomalously large outliers in the far-tails of the probability distributions of the transmission amplitudes between far-away many-body configurations in the Hilbert space. We first benchmark our approach onto two non-interacting paradigmatic toy models, namely the single-particle Anderson model on the (loop-less) Cayley tree and the Rosenzweig-Porter random matrix ensemble, and then apply it to the study of a class of disordered quantum spin chains in a transverse field. This analysis shows the existence of a broad disorder range in which rare, long-distance resonances, that may form only for a few specific realizations of the disorder and a few specific choice of the random initial state, destabilize the MBL phase, while the genuine MBL transition is shifted to much larger values of the disorder than originally thought.
Anderson localization - the suppression of wave propagation by interference in a sufficiently disordered medium - is one of the most remarkable phenomena in condensed matter physics. These lecture notes provide a pedagogical introduction to Anderson localization on the Bethe lattice, an infinite tree with fixed connectivity and no loops, and one of the few settings in which the transition can be studied exactly. The problem is important for two main reasons. First, the Anderson model on the Bethe lattice provides a mean-field, infinite-dimensional limit in which the transition point and critical behavior can be determined exactly. Second, it provides a simplified description of the high-dimensional configuration spaces of interacting quantum systems, and thus a useful toy model for many-body localization. We focus on the Green's function formalism and the cavity method. After recalling standard diagnostics of localization based on transport, spectral statistics, and eigenfunction moments, we show that they are encoded in the statistics of the Green's functions, and that the full distribution of the local density of states is the natural order parameter of the transition. We derive the exact self-consistent cavity equations on the Bethe lattice, use them to characterize the two phases and critical behavior - including an analytic solution at large connectivity - and describe population-dynamics algorithms that solve them with high precision. We explain how an exponentially large correlation volume and the localized nature of the critical point account for the strong finite-size effects on random regular graphs, which led to a long debate over a possible intermediate non-ergodic phase. Finally, we discuss the mapping onto directed polymers in random media, interpreting localization as a freezing transition dominated by a few rare resonant paths.
The effect of rare system-wide resonances in the many-body localization (MBL) transition has recently attracted significant attention. They are expected to play a prominent role in the stability of the MBL phase, prompting the development of new theoretical frameworks to properly account for their statistical weight. We employ a method based on an analogy with mean-field disordered glassy systems to characterize the statistics of transmission amplitudes between distant many-body configurations in Hilbert space, and apply it to the random-field XXZ spin chain. By introducing a Lagrange multiplier, which formally plays the role of an effective temperature controlling the influence of extreme outliers in the heavy-tailed distribution of propagators, we identify three distinct regimes: (i) an ergodic phase with uniform spreading in Hilbert space, (ii) an intermediate regime where delocalization is driven by rare, disorder-dependent long-range resonances, and (iii) a robust MBL phase where such resonances cannot destabilize localization. We derive a finite-size phase diagram in the disorder--interaction plane both in the spin and in the Anderson basis that quantitatively agrees with recent numerical results based on real-space spin-spin correlation functions. We further demonstrate that even infinitesimal interactions can destroy the Anderson insulator at finite disorder, with the critical disorder remaining finite down to small interaction strengths. By visualizing resonant transmission pathways on the Hilbert space graph, we provide a complementary perspective to real-space and spectral probes, revealing how the destabilization of the MBL phase at finite sizes stems from the emergence of resonant paths that become progressively rarer and shorter-ranged deep in the localized phase.
A disordered quantum system can be driven, e.g., by increasing disorder, through the Anderson transition between a delocalized and localized phase. Recently, Anderson localization on treelike graphs has attracted much attention in view of its connections with problems of many-body localization. One of the central questions in this context is that of ergodicity of eigenstates. The authors of this paper perform a numerical study of Anderson transition on random regular graphs (RRGs) with diagonal disorder. The problem can be described as a tight-binding model on a lattice with NNN sites that is locally a tree with constant connectivity. Focusing on the delocalized side of the transition, they show that the data can be interpreted in terms of the finite-size crossover from a small ($N\ensuremath{\ll}{N}_{c}$) to a large ($N\ensuremath{\gg}{N}_{c}$) system, where Nc{N}_{c}Nc​ is the correlation volume diverging exponentially at the transition. A distinct feature of this crossover is a nonmonotonicity of the spectral and wave-function statistics, which is related to properties of the critical phase in the studied model and renders the finite-size analysis highly nontrivial. The results support an analytical prediction that states in the delocalized phase (and at $N\ensuremath{\gg}{N}_{c}$) are ergodic.