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arXiv:2311.10150 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Robust nonergodicity of the ground states in the β ensemble

Adway Kumar Das, Anandamohan Ghosh, Ivan M. Khaymovich

Published Feb 22, 2024• 13 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In various chaotic quantum many-body systems, the ground states show nontrivial athermal behavior despite the bulk states exhibiting thermalization. Such athermal states play a crucial role in quantum information theory and its applications. Moreover, any generic quantum many-body system in the Krylov basis is represented by a tridiagonal Lanczos Hamiltonian, which is analogous to the matrices from the $\ensuremath{\beta}\phantom{\rule{4.pt}{0ex}}\text{ensemble}$, a well-studied random-matrix model with level repulsion tunable via the parameter $\ensuremath{\beta}$. Motivated by this, here we focus on the localization properties of the ground and anti-ground states of the $\ensuremath{\beta}\phantom{\rule{4.pt}{0ex}}\text{ensemble}$. Both analytically and numerically we show that both the edge states demonstrate nonergodic (fractal) properties for $\ensuremath{\beta}\ensuremath{\sim}\mathcal{O}(1)$, while the typical bulk states are ergodic. Surprisingly, the fractal dimension of the edge states remains three times smaller than that of the bulk states irrespective of the global phase of the $\ensuremath{\beta}\phantom{\rule{4.pt}{0ex}}\text{ensemble}$. In addition to the fractal dimensions, we also consider the distribution of the localization centers of the spectral edge states, their mutual separation, as well as the spatial and correlation properties of the first excited states.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.109.064206

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Matrix models showing a chaotic-integrable transition in the spectral statistics are important for understanding many-body localization (MBL) in physical systems. One such example is the $\ensuremath{\beta}$ ensemble, known for its structural simplicity. However, eigenvector properties of the $\ensuremath{\beta}$ ensemble remain largely unexplored, despite energy level correlations being thoroughly studied. In this work we numerically study the eigenvector properties of the $\ensuremath{\beta}$ ensemble and find that the Anderson transition occurs at $\ensuremath{\gamma}=1$ and ergodicity breaks down at $\ensuremath{\gamma}=0$ if we express the repulsion parameter as $\ensuremath{\beta}={N}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\gamma}}$. Thus other than the Rosenzweig-Porter ensemble (RPE), the $\ensuremath{\beta}$ ensemble is another example where nonergodic extended (NEE) states are observed over a finite interval of parameter values $(0<\ensuremath{\gamma}<1)$. We find that the chaotic-integrable transition coincides with the breaking of ergodicity in the $\ensuremath{\beta}$ ensemble but with the localization transition in the RPE or the 1D disordered spin-1/2 Heisenberg model. As a result, the dynamical timescales in the NEE regime of the $\ensuremath{\beta}$ ensemble behave differently than the latter models.
Models with correlated disorder are rather common in physics. In some of them, like the Aubry-André (AA) model, the localization phase diagram can be found from the (self)duality with respect to the Fourier transform. In others, like the all-to-all translation-invariant Rosenzweig-Porter (TI RP) ensemble or the many-body localization (MBL), one needs to develop more sophisticated and usually phenomenological methods to obtain the localization transition. In addition, such models contain not only localization, but also the ergodicity-breaking transition in the Hilbert-space eigenstate structure, giving way to the nonergodic (i.e., MBL) phase of states with nontrivial fractal dimensions D q > 0 . In this work, we suggest a method to calculate both the above transitions and a lower bound to the fractal dimensions D 2 and D ∞ , relevant for the physical observables. To verify this method, we apply it to the class of long-range (self-)dual models, interpolating between a tight-binding ballistic model and TI RP via both power-law dependencies of the hopping terms and the on-site disorder correlations, and, thus, being out of the validity range of the previously developed methods. We show that the interplay of the correlated disorder and the power-law decaying hopping terms leads to the emergence of the two types of nonergodic phases in the entire range of parameters, even without having any quasiperiodicity of the AA potential. The analytical results of the above method are in full agreement with the extensive numerical calculations.
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We determine the distribution of fidelity susceptibility for chaotic eigenstates at the spectral edge of Gaussian random-matrix ensembles. Previous work showed that, in the unitary class, the characteristic susceptibility scale of edge states grows as D1/3D^{1/3}D1/3, rather than proportionally to DDD as in the spectral bulk, reflecting Airy-edge level rigidity. Extending a determinant-based framework introduced for bulk states, we derive the universal edge distributions for both the orthogonal and unitary ensembles. The two symmetry classes share the scaling variable g/D1/3g/D^{1/3}g/D1/3 and exhibit a symmetry-dependent cubic suppression of small susceptibilities, while their algebraic large-ggg tails reflect the corresponding symmetry-dependent level repulsion. Although eigenvector statistics retain their random-matrix form throughout the spectrum, edge rigidity makes low-lying chaotic states parametrically less sensitive to generic perturbations than bulk states. Our results establish universal, symmetry-dependent spectral-edge fidelity-susceptibility statistics in systems whose chaotic dynamics extends down to the ground state.
We study whether a generic isolated quantum system initially set out of equilibrium can be considered as localized close to its initial state. Our approach considers the time evolution in the Krylov basis, which maps the system's dynamics onto that of a particle moving in a one-dimensional lattice where both the energy in the lattice sites and the tunneling from one lattice site to the next are inhomogeneous. By tying the dynamical propagation in the Krylov basis to that in the basis of microstates, we infer qualitative criteria that allow distinguishing systems that remain localized close to their initial state from systems that undergo quantum thermalization. These criteria are system-dependent and involve the expectation values and standard deviations of both the coupling strengths between Krylov states and their energy. We verify their validity by inspecting two cases: Anderson localization as a function of dimension and the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of a many-body dipolar spin system. We finally investigate the Wigner surmise and the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis that have both been proposed to characterize quantum chaotic systems. We show that when the average value of the nondiagonal terms in the Lanczos matrix is large compared to their fluctuations and to the fluctuations of the energy expectation values, which typically corresponds to delocalized quantum systems according to our criteria, there can be level repulsion of eigenenergies (also known as spectral rigidity), similar to that of the Wigner-Dyson statistics of energy levels; and we also demonstrate that in the same regime, the expectation values of typical local observables only weakly vary as a function of eigenstates, an important condition for the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. Our demonstration assumes that, in the chaotic regime, the observable is sufficiently diagonal in the basis of Krylov states. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
In this work, we establish a relation between entanglement entropy and fractal dimension D of generic many-body wave functions, by generalizing the result of Page [Phys. Rev. Lett. 71, 1291 (1993)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.71.1291] to the case of sparse random pure states (SRPS). These SRPS living in a Hilbert space of size N are defined as normalized vectors with only N^{D} (0≤D≤1) random nonzero elements. For D=1, these states used by Page represent ergodic states at an infinite temperature. However, for 0<D<1, the SRPS are nonergodic and fractal, as they are confined in a vanishing ratio N^{D}/N of the full Hilbert space. Both analytically and numerically, we show that the mean entanglement entropy S_{1}(A) of a subsystem A, with Hilbert space dimension N_{A}, scales as S_{1}[over ¯](A)∼DlnN for small fractal dimensions D, N^{D}<N_{A}. Remarkably, S_{1}[over ¯](A) saturates at its thermal (Page) value at an infinite temperature, S_{1}[over ¯](A)∼lnN_{A} at larger D. Consequently, we provide an example when the entanglement entropy takes an ergodic value even though the wave function is highly nonergodic. Finally, we generalize our results to Renyi entropies S_{q}(A) with q>1 and to genuine multifractal states and also show that their fluctuations have ergodic behavior in a narrower vicinity of the ergodic state D=1.