Recent progress in the study of many-body localization in strongly disordered interacting spin chains has emphasized the importance of distinguishing finite time prethermal behavior from long time and large volume asymptotics. We reexamine a reported nonergodic extended (NEE) regime in the interacting quasiperiodic Ganeshan-Pixley-Das Sarma model from this perspective, and propose that this regime is a prethermal feature. Indeed, we argue that the NEE regime may be identified through a change in the functional form of spin-spin autocorrelation functions, demonstrating that the NEE regime is distinguishable within intermediate-time dynamics. This is in contrast with existing conjectures relating the NEE regime to the presence of an asymptotic mobility edge in the single-particle spectrum. Thus, we propose a mechanism for the formation of an NEE regime which does not rely on asymptotic properties of the spin chain. Namely, we propose that the NEE regime emerges due to regularly spaced deep wells in the disorder potential. The highly detuned sites suppress spin transport across the system, effectively cutting the chain and producing a separation of timescales between the spreading of different operators. To support this proposal, we show that the NEE phenomenology also occurs in random models with deep wells but with no mobility edges, and does not occur in quasiperiodic models with mobility edges but with no deep wells. Our results support the broad conclusion that there is not a sharp distinction between the dynamics of quasiperiodically and randomly disordered systems in the prethermal regime. More specifically, we find that generic interacting quasiperiodic models do not have stable intermediate dynamical phases arising from their single-particle mobility edges, and that NEE phenomenology in such models is transient.
Many-body eigenstates that are neither thermal nor many-body localized (MBL) have been numerically found in certain interacting chains with moderate quasiperiodic potentials. The energy regime consisting of these nonergodic but extended (NEE) eigenstates has been extensively studied as a possible many-body mobility edge between the energy-resolved MBL and thermal phases. Recently, the NEE regime was proposed to be a prethermal phenomenon that generally occurs when different operators spread on sizably different timescales. Here, we numerically examine the mutual independence among the NEE, MBL, and thermal regimes through the lens of eigenstate entanglement spectra (ES). Given the complexity and rich information embedded in ES, we develop an unsupervised learning approach designed to quantify the mutual independence among general phases. Our method is first demonstrated on an illustrative toy example that uses RGB color data to represent phases, and then applied to the ES of an interacting generalized Aubry-Andre model from weak to strong potential strength. We find that while the MBL and thermal regimes are mutually independent, the NEE regime is dependent on the former two and smoothly emerges as the potential strength decreases. We attribute this numerical finding to the fact that the ES data in the NEE regime exhibit both an MBL-like fast decay and a thermal-like long tail.
We study many-body localization (MBL) in a one-dimensional system of spinless fermions with a deterministic aperiodic potential in the presence of random interactions
Vij decaying as power-law ${V}_{ij}/{({r}_{ij})}^{\ensuremath{\alpha}}$ with distance
rij. We demonstrate that MBL survives even for $\ensuremath{\alpha}<1$ and is preceded by a broad nonergodic subdiffusive phase. Starting from parameters at which the short-range interacting system shows an infinite temperature MBL phase, turning on random power-law interactions results in many-body mobility edges in the spectrum with a larger fraction of ergodic delocalized states for smaller values of $\ensuremath{\alpha}$. Hence, the critical disorder
hcr, at which ergodic to nonergodic transition takes place, increases with the range of interactions. Time evolution of the density imbalance
I(t), which has power-law decay $I(t)\ensuremath{\sim}{t}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\gamma}}$ in the intermediate to large time regime, shows that the critical disorder
hcI, above which the system becomes diffusionless (with $\ensuremath{\gamma}\ensuremath{\sim}0$) and transits into the MBL phase, is much larger than
hcr. In between
hcr and
hcI there is a broad nonergodic subdiffusive phase, which is characterized by the Poissonian statistics for the level spacing ratio, multifractal eigenfunctions, and a nonzero dynamical exponent $\ensuremath{\gamma}\ensuremath{\ll}1/2$. The system continues to be subdiffusive even on the ergodic side (
h<hcr) of the MBL transition, where the eigenstates near the mobility edges are multifractal. For
h<h0<hcr, the system is superdiffusive with $\ensuremath{\gamma}>1/2$. The rich phase diagram obtained here is unique to the random nature of long-range interactions. We explain this in terms of the enhanced correlations among local energies of the effective Anderson model induced by random power-law interactions.
We study the transport properties and the spectral statistics of a one-dimensional closed quantum system of interacting spinless fermions in a quasiperiodic potential which produces a single-particle mobility edge in the absence of interaction. For such systems, it has been shown that the many-body eigenstates can be of three different kinds: extended and eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) obeying (thermal), localized and ETH violating (many body localized), and extended and ETH violating (nonergodic extended). Here we investigate the nonergodic extended phase from the point of view of level spacing statistics and charge transport. We calculate the dc conductivity and the low-frequency conductivity $\ensuremath{\sigma}(\ensuremath{\omega})$ and show that both are consistent with subdiffusive transport. This is contrasted with diffusive transport in the thermal phase and blocked transport in the MBL phase.
While the prethermal regime of random many-body localized (MBL) systems is dominated by accidental many-body resonances, another class of resonances, originating from the underlying potential structure, is expected in large-size deterministic systems. It is known that this class of resonances can lead to single-particle critical phases that are neither localized nor extended, but the consequences in interacting systems remain unclear. In this work, we construct an asymptotically solvable model of a one-dimensional nearest-neighbor interacting spin chain, whose spatial structure induces a hierarchy of mirror-like many-body resonances. We derive two phases in the thermodynamic limit, characterized by the satisfaction and violation of a version of the weak eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH). While these two phases are similar to the usual MBL and ETH phases, there exist rare eigenstates that behave like the opposite phase, interpreted as many-body scars and inverted scars. Surprisingly, the two phases can be separated by a finite-temperature phase transition, corresponding to a thermodynamic many-body mobility edge, which was often believed to be impossible. Our results also suggest the existence of delocalized rare regions in an otherwise-localized interacting Aubry-André model, even if there are no low-disorder regions like those in random systems. This challenges the common belief that there is no avalanche instability in quasiperiodic MBL.
Quantum thermalization of isolated systems undergoing unitary time evolution is a fundamental problem in quantum statistical mechanics. Its study has been revived recently in the context of many-body Anderson localization. Previous works have focused on localization of many-body systems with all the single-particle states being localized. As a significant step forward, this work studies localization aspects of noninteracting many-particle systems in the presence of a single-particle mobility edge. By systemically investigating entanglement entropy scaling and nonthermal fluctuations in various lattice models, the authors establish a nonergodic extended phase as a generic intermediate phase (between purely ergodic extended and nonergodic localized phases) for the many-body localization transition of noninteracting fermions. This work also sheds light on the interacting transition scenario as well.
We study prethermal time quasicrystalline (TQC) order in a quasiperiodically driven chain of non-interacting spin-1/2 particles. The drive consists of two parts, switched on and off periodically with frequency
ωd: (i) disordered Ising interactions, with exchange couplings chosen from a symmetric interval
[−J/2,J/2], allowing random antiferromagnetic or ferromagnetic nearest-neighbor couplings, together with a random transverse field; and (ii) a rotating transverse magnetic field with frequency
Ω. The ratio
ωd/Ω is chosen to be irrational, producing multiple incommensurate frequencies and yielding quasiperiodic dynamics beyond Floquet theory. Using exact diagonalization, we analyze the time autocorrelation function, dynamical structure factor, and entanglement entropy (EE). In the high-frequency regime, robust spectral peaks at incommensurate frequencies (not integer multiples of the fundamental drives) signal quasiperiodic time-translation symmetry breaking (QTTSB). The EE exhibits sublinear power-law growth followed by a prethermal plateau, indicating suppressed resonant heating due to an energy scale mismatch. The nonequilibrium lifetime increases rapidly with driving frequency. Unlike symmetric disorder sampling, an asymmetric distribution of the Ising exchange couplings induces collective spin rigidity, enhancing the system's resistance to heating. The TQC phase remains stable against next-nearest-neighbor (NNN) exchange perturbations and rotational imperfections, with robustness comparable to discrete time crystals (TCs) under periodic driving. Our results establish this quasiperiodically driven system as a platform for long-lived nonequilibrium temporal order, revealing the interplay of disorder, collective rigidity, and quasiperiodic driving.