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arXiv:2209.01337 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Mobility edge in long-range interacting many-body localized systems

Rozhin Yousefjani, Abolfazl Bayat

Published Jan 6, 2023• 21 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

As disorder strength increases in quantum many-body systems a new phase of matter, the so-called many-body localization, emerges across the whole spectrum. This transition is energy dependent, a phenomenon known as mobility edge, such that the mid-spectrum eigenstates tend to localize at larger values of disorder in comparison to eigenstates near the edges of the spectrum. Many-body localization becomes more sophisticated in long-range interacting systems. Here, by focusing on several quantities, we draw the phase diagram as a function of disorder strength and energy spectrum, for a various range of interactions. Regardless of the underlying transition type, either second-order or Kosterlitz-Thouless, our analysis consistently determines the mobility edge, i.e., the phase boundary across the spectrum. We show that, long-range interaction enhances the localization effect and shifts the phase boundary towards smaller values of disorder. In addition, we establish a hierarchy among the studied quantities concerning their corresponding transition boundary and critical exponents. Interestingly, we show that deliberately discarding some information of the system can mitigate finite-size effects and provide results in line with the analytical predictions at the thermodynamic limit.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.107.045108

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As disorder strength increases in quantum many-body systems a new phase of matter, the so-called many-body localization, emerges across the whole spectrum. This transition is energy dependent, a phenomenon known as mobility edge, such that the mid-spectrum eigenstates tend to localize at larger values of disorder in comparison to eigenstates near the edges of the spectrum. Many-body localization becomes more sophisticated in long-range interacting systems. Here, by focusing on several quantities, we draw the phase diagram as a function of disorder strength and energy spectrum, for a various range of interactions. Regardless of the underlying transition type, either second-order or Kosterlitz-Thouless, our analysis consistently determines the mobility edge, i.e., the phase boundary across the spectrum. We show that, long-range interaction enhances the localization effect and shifts the phase boundary towards smaller values of disorder. In addition, we establish a hierarchy among the studied quantities concerning their corresponding transition boundary and critical exponents. Interestingly, we show that deliberately discarding some information of the system can mitigate finite-size effects and provide results in line with the analytical predictions at the thermodynamic limit.
Disorder and interactions can lead to the breakdown of statistical mechanics in quantum systems by transitioning to a many-body localized (MBL) phase. The thermal-to-MBL transition occurs by either increasing the amount of disorder present in a system or by decreasing its energy until it crosses the so-called mobility edge. The authors construct a set of approximate integrals of motion that are quasi-universal across the energy spectrum and, thus, across the mobility edge, too. Interestingly, MBL eigenstates under the mobility edge are aware of the existence of a thermal phase at a higher energy. The phase diagram is probed close to the transition and in the MBL phase. One finds a universal distribution of the strength of the couplings of the integrals of motion in the strong disorder limit.
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.
The many-body localization (MBL) transition is a quantum phase transition involving highly excited eigenstates of a disordered quantum many-body Hamiltonian, which evolve from “extended/ergodic" (exhibiting extensive entanglement entropies and fluctuations) to “localized" (exhibiting area-law scaling of entanglement and fluctuations). The MBL transition can be driven by the strength of disorder in a given spectral range, or by the energy density at fixed disorder – if the system possesses a many-body mobility edge. Here we propose to explore the latter mechanism by using “quantum-quench spectroscopy", namely via quantum quenches of variable width which prepare the state of the system in a superposition of eigenstates of the Hamiltonian within a controllable spectral region. Studying numerically a chain of interacting spinless fermions in a quasi-periodic potential, we argue that this system has a many-body mobility edge; and we show that its existence translates into a clear dynamical transition in the time evolution immediately following a quench in the strength of the quasi-periodic potential, as well as a transition in the scaling properties of the quasi-stationary state at long times. Our results suggest a practical scheme for the experimental observation of many-body mobility edges using cold-atom setups.
Many-body localization provides a mechanism to avoid thermalization in isolated interacting quantum systems. The breakdown of thermalization may be complete, when all eigenstates in the many-body spectrum become localized, or partial, when the so-called many-body mobility edge separates localized and delocalized parts of the spectrum. Previously, De Roeck et al. [Phys. Rev. B 93, 014203 (2016)] suggested a possible instability of the many-body mobility edge in energy density. The local ergodic regions---so-called ``bubbles''---resonantly spread throughout the system, leading to delocalization. In order to study such instability mechanism, in this work we design a model featuring many-body mobility edge in particle density: the states at small particle density are localized, while increasing the density of particles leads to delocalization. Using numerical simulations with matrix product states, we demonstrate the stability of many-body localization with respect to small bubbles in large dilute systems for experimentally relevant timescales. In addition, we demonstrate that processes where the bubble spreads are favored over processes that lead to resonant tunneling, suggesting a possible mechanism behind the observed stability of many-body mobility edge. We conclude by proposing experiments to probe particle density mobility edge in the Bose-Hubbard model.
We theoretically investigate the many-body localization phase transition in a one-dimensional Ising spin chain with random long-range spin-spin interactions, ${V}_{ij}\ensuremath{\propto}{\left|i\ensuremath{-}j\right|}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\alpha}}$, where the exponent of the interaction range $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ can be tuned from zero to infinitely large. By using exact diagonalization, we calculate the half-chain entanglement entropy and the energy spectral statistics and use them to characterize the phase transition towards the many-body localization phase at infinite temperature and at sufficiently large disorder strength. We perform finite-size scaling to extract the critical disorder strength and the critical exponent of the divergent localization length. With increasing $\ensuremath{\alpha}$, the critical exponent experiences a sharp increase at about ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{c}\ensuremath{\simeq}1.2$ and then gradually decreases to a value found earlier in a disordered short-ranged interacting spin chain. For $\ensuremath{\alpha}<{\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{c}$, we find that the system is mostly localized and the increase in the disorder strength may drive a transition between two many-body localized phases. In contrast, for $\ensuremath{\alpha}>{\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{c}$, the transition is from a thermalized phase to the many-body localization phase. Our predictions could be experimentally tested with an ion-trap quantum emulator with programmable random long-range interactions, or with randomly distributed Rydberg atoms or polar molecules in lattices.
Many-body localization occurs in isolated quantum systems when Anderson localization persists in the presence of finite interactions. Despite strong evidence for the existence of a many-body localization transition, a reliable extraction of the critical disorder strength is difficult due to a large drift with system size in the studied quantities. In this Letter, we explore two entanglement properties that are promising for the study of the many-body localization transition: the variance of the half-chain entanglement entropy of exact eigenstates and the long time change in entanglement after a local quench from an exact eigenstate. We investigate these quantities in a disordered quantum Ising chain and use them to estimate the critical disorder strength and its energy dependence. In addition, we analyze a spin-glass transition at large disorder strength and provide evidence for it being a separate transition. We, thereby, give numerical support for a recently proposed phase diagram of many-body localization with localization protected quantum order [Huse et al., Phys. Rev. B 88, 014206 (2013).