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:2208.14432 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Local integrals of motion and the stability of many-body localization in Wannier-Stark potentials

Christian Bertoni, Jens Eisert, Augustine Kshetrimayum, Alexander Nietner, S. J. Thomson

Published Jan 29, 2024• 9 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Many-body localization in disordered systems in one spatial dimension is typically understood in terms of the existence of an extensive number of (quasi) local integrals of motion (LIOMs) which are thought to decay exponentially with distance and interact only weakly with one another. By contrast, little is known about the form of the integrals of motion in disorder-free systems which exhibit localization. Here, we explicitly compute the LIOMs for disorder-free localized systems, focusing on the case of a linearly increasing potential. We show that while in the absence of interactions, the LIOMs decay faster than exponentially, the addition of interactions leads to the formation of a slow-decaying plateau at short distances. We study how the localization properties of the LIOMs depend on the linear slope, finding that there is a significant finite-size dependence, and present evidence that adding a weak harmonic potential does not result in typical many-body localization phenomenology. By contrast, the addition of disorder has a qualitatively different effect, dramatically modifying the properties of the LIOMS.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.109.024206

Related papers

Many-body localization: stability and instability

Wojciech De Roeck, John Z. Imbrie

Rare regions with weak disorder (Griffiths regions) have the potential to spoil localization. We describe a non-perturbative construction of local integrals of motion (LIOMs) for a weakly interacting spin chain in one dimension, under a physically reasonable assumption on the statistics of eigenvalues. We discuss ideas about the situation in higher dimensions, where one can no longer ensure that interactions involving the Griffiths regions are much smaller than the typical energy-level spacing for such regions. We argue that ergodicity is restored in dimension d >1, although equilibration should be extremely slow, similar to the dynamics of glasses. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Breakdown of ergodicity in quantum systems: from solids to synthetic matter’.

arXiv:1705.00756•Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences•Oct 30, 2017•86 citations

Constructing local integrals of motion in the many-body localized phase

Anushya Chandran, Isaac H. Kim, Guifré Vidal +1 more

Many-body localization provides a generic mechanism of ergodicity breaking in quantum systems. In contrast to conventional ergodic systems, many-body-localized (MBL) systems are characterized by extensively many local integrals of motion (LIOM), which underlie the absence of transport and thermalization in these systems. Here we report a physically motivated construction of local integrals of motion in the MBL phase. We show that any local operator (e.g., a local particle number or a spin-flip operator), evolved with the system's Hamiltonian and averaged over time, becomes a LIOM in the MBL phase. Such operators have a clear physical meaning, describing the response of the MBL system to a local perturbation. In particular, when a local operator represents a density of some globally conserved quantity, the corresponding LIOM describes how this conserved quantity propagates through the MBL phase. Being uniquely defined and experimentally measurable, these LIOMs provide a natural tool for characterizing the properties of the MBL phase, in both experiments and numerical simulations. We demonstrate the latter by numerically constructing an extensive set of LIOMs in the MBL phase of a disordered spin-chain model. We show that the resulting LIOMs are quasilocal and use their decay to extract the localization length and establish the location of the transition between the MBL and ergodic phases.

arXiv:1407.8480•Physical Review B•Feb 24, 2015•301 citations

Local integrals of motion in many‐body localized systems

John Z. Imbrie, Valentina Ros, Antonello Scardicchio

We review the current (as of Fall 2016) status of the studies on the emergent integrability in many‐body localized models. We start by explaining how the phenomenology of fully many‐body localized systems can be recovered if one assumes the existence of a complete set of (quasi)local operators which commute with the Hamiltonian (local integrals of motions, or LIOMs). We describe the evolution of this idea from the initial conjecture, to the perturbative constructions, to the mathematical proof given for a disordered spin chain. We discuss the proposed numerical algorithms for the construction of LIOMs and the status of the debate on the existence and nature of such operators in systems with a many‐body mobility edge, and in dimensions larger than one. image

arXiv:1609.08076•Annalen der Physik•May 11, 2017•277 citations

Structural properties of local integrals of motion across the many-body localization transition via a fast and efficient method for their construction

Safa Adami, Mohsen Amini, Morteza Soltani

Many-body localization (MBL) is a novel prototype of ergodicity breaking due to the emergence of local integrals of motion (LIOMs) in a disordered interacting quantum system. To better understand the role played by the existence of such LIOMs, we explore and study some of their structural properties across the MBL transition. We first consider a one-dimensional XXZ spin chain in a disordered magnetic field and introduce and implement a nonperturbative, fast, and accurate method of constructing LIOMs. In contrast to already existing methods, our scheme allows obtaining LIOMs not only in the deep MBL phase but, rather, near the transition point too. Then, we take the matrix representation of LIOM operators as an adjacency matrix of a directed graph whose elements describe the connectivity of ordered eigenbasis in the Hilbert space. Our cluster-size analysis for this graph shows that the MBL transition coincides with a percolation transition in the Hilbert space. By performing finite-size scaling, we compare the critical disorder and correlation exponent $\ensuremath{\nu}$ both in the presence and absence of interactions. Finally, we also discuss how the distribution of diagonal elements of LIOM operators in a typical cluster signals the transition.

arXiv:2204.08835•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Aug 9, 2022•7 citations

Localization and slow-thermalization in a cluster spin model

Yoshihito Kuno, Takahiro Orito, Ikuo Ichinose

Abstract Novel cluster spin model with interactions and disorder is introduced and studied. In specific type of interactions, we find an extensive number of local integrals of motions (LIOMs), which are a modified version of the stabilizers in quantum information, i.e., mutually commuting operators specifying all quantum states in the system. These LIOMs can be defined for any strength of the interactions and disorder, and are of compact-support instead of exponentially-decaying tail. Hence, even under the presence of interactions, integrability is held, and all energy eigenstates are labeled by these LIOMs and can be explicitly obtained. Integrable dynamics is, then, expected to occur. The compact-support nature of the LIOMs crucially prevents the thermalization and entanglement spreading. We numerically investigate dynamics of the system governed by the existence of the compact-support LIOMs, and clarify the effects of additional interactions, which break the compact-support nature of the LIOMs. There, we find that the ordinary many-body localization behaviors emerge, such as the logarithmic growth of the entanglement entropy in the time evolution. Besides the ergodicity breaking dynamic, we find that symmetry protected topological order preserves for specific states even in the presence of the interactions.

arXiv:2110.05970•New Journal of Physics•Jun 29, 2022•2 citations

Local integrals of motion and the quasiperiodic many-body localization transition

Hansveer Singh, Brayden Ware, Romain Vasseur +1 more

We study the many-body localization (MBL) transition for interacting fermions subject to quasiperiodic potentials by constructing the local integrals of motion (LIOMs) in the MBL phase as time-averaged local operators. We study numerically how these time-averaged operators evolve across the MBL transition. We find that the norm of such time-averaged operators drops discontinuously to zero across the transition; as we discuss, this implies that LIOMs abruptly become unstable at some critical localization length of order unity. We analyze the LIOMs using hydrodynamic projections and isolating the part of the operator that is associated with interactions. Equipped with these data we perform a finite-size scaling analysis of the quasiperiodic MBL transition. Our results suggest that the quasiperiodic MBL transition occurs at considerably stronger quasiperiodic modulations and has a larger correlation-length critical exponent than previous studies had found.

arXiv:2101.04126•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Jun 3, 2021•32 citations
Many-body localization in disordered systems in one spatial dimension is typically understood in terms of the existence of an extensive number of (quasi) local integrals of motion (LIOMs) which are thought to decay exponentially with distance and interact only weakly with one another. By contrast, little is known about the form of the integrals of motion in disorder-free systems which exhibit localization. Here, we explicitly compute the LIOMs for disorder-free localized systems, focusing on the case of a linearly increasing potential. We show that while in the absence of interactions, the LIOMs decay faster than exponentially, the addition of interactions leads to the formation of a slow-decaying plateau at short distances. We study how the localization properties of the LIOMs depend on the linear slope, finding that there is a significant finite-size dependence, and present evidence that adding a weak harmonic potential does not result in typical many-body localization phenomenology. By contrast, the addition of disorder has a qualitatively different effect, dramatically modifying the properties of the LIOMS.
Rare regions with weak disorder (Griffiths regions) have the potential to spoil localization. We describe a non-perturbative construction of local integrals of motion (LIOMs) for a weakly interacting spin chain in one dimension, under a physically reasonable assumption on the statistics of eigenvalues. We discuss ideas about the situation in higher dimensions, where one can no longer ensure that interactions involving the Griffiths regions are much smaller than the typical energy-level spacing for such regions. We argue that ergodicity is restored in dimension d >1, although equilibration should be extremely slow, similar to the dynamics of glasses. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Breakdown of ergodicity in quantum systems: from solids to synthetic matter’.
Many-body localization provides a generic mechanism of ergodicity breaking in quantum systems. In contrast to conventional ergodic systems, many-body-localized (MBL) systems are characterized by extensively many local integrals of motion (LIOM), which underlie the absence of transport and thermalization in these systems. Here we report a physically motivated construction of local integrals of motion in the MBL phase. We show that any local operator (e.g., a local particle number or a spin-flip operator), evolved with the system's Hamiltonian and averaged over time, becomes a LIOM in the MBL phase. Such operators have a clear physical meaning, describing the response of the MBL system to a local perturbation. In particular, when a local operator represents a density of some globally conserved quantity, the corresponding LIOM describes how this conserved quantity propagates through the MBL phase. Being uniquely defined and experimentally measurable, these LIOMs provide a natural tool for characterizing the properties of the MBL phase, in both experiments and numerical simulations. We demonstrate the latter by numerically constructing an extensive set of LIOMs in the MBL phase of a disordered spin-chain model. We show that the resulting LIOMs are quasilocal and use their decay to extract the localization length and establish the location of the transition between the MBL and ergodic phases.
We review the current (as of Fall 2016) status of the studies on the emergent integrability in many‐body localized models. We start by explaining how the phenomenology of fully many‐body localized systems can be recovered if one assumes the existence of a complete set of (quasi)local operators which commute with the Hamiltonian (local integrals of motions, or LIOMs). We describe the evolution of this idea from the initial conjecture, to the perturbative constructions, to the mathematical proof given for a disordered spin chain. We discuss the proposed numerical algorithms for the construction of LIOMs and the status of the debate on the existence and nature of such operators in systems with a many‐body mobility edge, and in dimensions larger than one. image
Many-body localization (MBL) is a novel prototype of ergodicity breaking due to the emergence of local integrals of motion (LIOMs) in a disordered interacting quantum system. To better understand the role played by the existence of such LIOMs, we explore and study some of their structural properties across the MBL transition. We first consider a one-dimensional XXZ spin chain in a disordered magnetic field and introduce and implement a nonperturbative, fast, and accurate method of constructing LIOMs. In contrast to already existing methods, our scheme allows obtaining LIOMs not only in the deep MBL phase but, rather, near the transition point too. Then, we take the matrix representation of LIOM operators as an adjacency matrix of a directed graph whose elements describe the connectivity of ordered eigenbasis in the Hilbert space. Our cluster-size analysis for this graph shows that the MBL transition coincides with a percolation transition in the Hilbert space. By performing finite-size scaling, we compare the critical disorder and correlation exponent $\ensuremath{\nu}$ both in the presence and absence of interactions. Finally, we also discuss how the distribution of diagonal elements of LIOM operators in a typical cluster signals the transition.
Abstract Novel cluster spin model with interactions and disorder is introduced and studied. In specific type of interactions, we find an extensive number of local integrals of motions (LIOMs), which are a modified version of the stabilizers in quantum information, i.e., mutually commuting operators specifying all quantum states in the system. These LIOMs can be defined for any strength of the interactions and disorder, and are of compact-support instead of exponentially-decaying tail. Hence, even under the presence of interactions, integrability is held, and all energy eigenstates are labeled by these LIOMs and can be explicitly obtained. Integrable dynamics is, then, expected to occur. The compact-support nature of the LIOMs crucially prevents the thermalization and entanglement spreading. We numerically investigate dynamics of the system governed by the existence of the compact-support LIOMs, and clarify the effects of additional interactions, which break the compact-support nature of the LIOMs. There, we find that the ordinary many-body localization behaviors emerge, such as the logarithmic growth of the entanglement entropy in the time evolution. Besides the ergodicity breaking dynamic, we find that symmetry protected topological order preserves for specific states even in the presence of the interactions.
We study the many-body localization (MBL) transition for interacting fermions subject to quasiperiodic potentials by constructing the local integrals of motion (LIOMs) in the MBL phase as time-averaged local operators. We study numerically how these time-averaged operators evolve across the MBL transition. We find that the norm of such time-averaged operators drops discontinuously to zero across the transition; as we discuss, this implies that LIOMs abruptly become unstable at some critical localization length of order unity. We analyze the LIOMs using hydrodynamic projections and isolating the part of the operator that is associated with interactions. Equipped with these data we perform a finite-size scaling analysis of the quasiperiodic MBL transition. Our results suggest that the quasiperiodic MBL transition occurs at considerably stronger quasiperiodic modulations and has a larger correlation-length critical exponent than previous studies had found.