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arXiv:2109.07640 · Europhysics Letters (EPL)

Adding boundary terms to Anderson localized Hamiltonians leads to unbounded growth of entanglement

Yichen Huang

Published Mar 6, 2023• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract It is well known that in Anderson localized systems, starting from a random product state the entanglement entropy remains bounded at all times. However, we show that adding a single boundary term to an Anderson localized Hamiltonian leads to unbounded growth of entanglement. Our results imply that Anderson localization is not a local property. One cannot conclude that a subsystem has Anderson localized behavior without looking at the whole system, as a term that is arbitrarily far from the subsystem can affect the dynamics of the subsystem in such a way that the features of Anderson localization are lost.

DOI
10.1209/0295-5075/acc19d

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We study the entanglement dynamics of quantum many-body systems and prove the following: (I) For any geometrically local Hamiltonian on a lattice, starting from a random product state the entanglement entropy is bounded away from the maximum entropy at all times with high probability. (II) In a spin-glass model with random all-to-all interactions, starting from any product state the average entanglement entropy is bounded away from the maximum entropy at all times. We also extend these results to any unitary evolution with charge conservation and to the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model. Our results highlight the difference between the entanglement generated by (chaotic) Hamiltonian dynamics and that of random states, for the latter is nearly maximal.
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