This article reviews recent progress in understanding the physics of many-body localisation (MBL) in disordered and interacting quantum many-body systems, from the perspective of ergodicity breaking on the associated Fock space. This approach to MBL is underpinned by mapping the dynamics of the many-body system onto that of a fictitious single particle on the high-dimensional, correlated and disordered Fock-space graph; yet, as we elaborate, the problem is fundamentally different from that of conventional Anderson localisation on high-dimensional or hierarchical graphs. We discuss in detail the nature of eigenstate correlations on the Fock space, both static and dynamic, and in the ergodic and many-body localised phases as well as in the vicinity of the MBL transition. The latter in turn sheds light on the nature of the transition, and motivates a scaling theory for it in terms of Fock-space based quantities. We also illustrate how these quantities can be concretely connected to real-space observables. An overview is given of several analytical and numerical techniques which have proven important in developing a comprehensive picture. Finally, we comment on some open questions in the field of MBL where the Fock-space approach is likely to prove insightful.
This article reviews recent progress in understanding the physics of many-body localisation (MBL) in disordered and interacting quantum many-body systems, from the perspective of ergodicity breaking on the associated Fock space. This approach to MBL is underpinned by mapping the dynamics of the many-body system onto that of a fictitious single particle on the high-dimensional, correlated and disordered Fock-space graph; yet, as we elaborate, the problem is fundamentally different from that of conventional Anderson localisation on high-dimensional or hierarchical graphs. We discuss in detail the nature of eigenstate correlations on the Fock space, both static and dynamic, and in the ergodic and many-body localised phases as well as in the vicinity of the MBL transition. The latter in turn sheds light on the nature of the transition, and motivates a scaling theory for it in terms of Fock-space based quantities. We also illustrate how these quantities can be concretely connected to real-space observables. An overview is given of several analytical and numerical techniques which have proven important in developing a comprehensive picture. Finally, we comment on some open questions in the field of MBL where the Fock-space approach is likely to prove insightful.
We explore the Fock-space landscape of eigenstates across the many-body localisation (MBL) transition in a disordered, interacting quantum spin-1/2 chain. Eigenstate expectation values of spatially local observables, which distinguish an MBL phase from an ergodic one, can be represented in terms of eigenstate amplitudes on the Fock space. Motivated by this, we introduce and study spatial correlations on the Fock space. From these, a correlation length emerges, which is found to vary discontinuously across the MBL transition; and is intimately connected to the discontinuous jump in the multifractal exponents characterising the Fock-space wavefunctions. Exploiting the direct connection between the local observables and Fock-space correlations, we show that the discontinuity in the lengthscale also implies discontinuous behaviour of the local observables across the transition. The scaling behaviour of this lengthscale, which is closely connected to that of the inverse participation ratios, shows that the nature of the MBL transition is consistent with it being Kosterlitz-Thouless like, as predicted by recent phenomenological theories. Finally, we also show how correlation functions on the Fock space reveal the inhomogeneities in eigenstate amplitudes on the Fock space in the MBL phase.
We explore the Fock-space structure of eigenstates across the many-body localization (MBL) transition in a disordered, interacting quantum spin-21 chain. Eigenstate expectation values of spatially local observables, which distinguish an MBL phase from an ergodic one, can be represented in terms of eigenstate amplitudes on the Fock space. Motivated by this, we introduce and study spatial correlations on the Fock space. From these, a correlation length emerges, which is found to vary discontinuously across the MBL transition, and is intimately connected to the discontinuous jump in the multifractal exponents characterizing the Fock-space wave functions. Exploiting the direct connection between the local observables and Fock-space correlations, we show that the discontinuity in the length scale also implies discontinuous behavior of the local observables across the transition. A scaling theory based on these Fock-space correlations is constructed, which is closely connected to that for the inverse participation ratio. It yields a volume scale in the ergodic phase and a length scale in the MBL phase, whose critical properties suggest a Kosterlitz-Thouless--type scenario for the MBL transition, as is predicted by recent phenomenological theories. Finally, we also show how correlation functions on the Fock space reveal the inhomogeneities in eigenstate amplitudes on the Fock space in the MBL phase.
Abstract Quantum many-body simulation provides a straightforward way to understand fundamental physics and connect with quantum information applications. However, suffering from exponentially growing Hilbert space size, characterization in terms of few-body probes in real space is often insufficient to tackle challenging problems such as quantum critical behavior and many-body localization (MBL) in higher dimensions. Here, we experimentally employ a new paradigm on a superconducting quantum processor, exploring such elusive questions from a Fock space view: mapping the many-body system onto an unconventional Anderson model on a complex Fock space network of many-body states. By observing the wave packet propagating in Fock space and the emergence of a statistical ergodic ensemble, we reveal a fresh picture for characterizing representative many-body dynamics: thermalization, localization, and scarring. In addition, we observe a quantum critical regime of anomalously enhanced wave packet width and deduce a critical point from the maximum wave packet fluctuations, which lend support for the two-dimensional MBL transition in finite-sized systems. Our work unveils a new perspective of exploring many-body physics in Fock space, demonstrating its practical applications on contentious MBL aspects such as criticality and dimensionality. Moreover, the entire protocol is universal and scalable, paving the way to finally solve a broader range of controversial many-body problems on future larger quantum devices.
We numerically investigate one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard chains with on-site disorder by means of exact diagonalization. A primary focus of our work is on characterizing Fock-space localization in this model from the single-particle perspective. For this purpose, we compute the one-particle density matrix (OPDM) in many-body eigenstates. We show that the natural orbitals (the eigenstates of the OPDM) are extended in the ergodic phase and real-space localized when one enters the many-body localization (MBL) phase. Furthermore, the distributions of occupations of the natural orbitals can be used as measures of Fock-space localization in the respective basis. Consistent with previous studies, we observe signatures of a transition from the ergodic to the MBL regime when increasing the disorder strength. We further demonstrate that Fock-space localization, albeit weaker, is also evidently present in the distribution of the physical densities in the MBL regime, for both soft- and hard-core bosons. Moreover, the full distribution of the densities of the physical particles provides a one-particle measure for the detection of the ergodic-MBL transition which could be directly accessed in experiments with ultracold gases.
Abstract Statistical mechanics provides a framework for describing the physics of large, complex many-body systems using only a few macroscopic parameters to determine the state of the system. For isolated quantum many-body systems, such a description is achieved via the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH), which links thermalization, ergodicity and quantum chaotic behavior. However, tendency towards thermalization is not observed at finite system sizes and evolution times in a robust many-body localization (MBL) regime found numerically and experimentally in the dynamics of interacting many-body systems at strong disorder. Although the phenomenology of the MBL regime is well-established, the central question remains unanswered: under what conditions does the MBL regime give rise to an MBL phase , in which the thermalization does not occur even in the asymptotic limit of infinite system size and evolution time? This review focuses on recent numerical investigations aiming to clarify the status of the MBL phase, and it establishes the critical open questions about the dynamics of disordered many-body systems. The last decades of research have brought an unprecedented new variety of tools and indicators to study the breakdown of ergodicity, ranging from spectral and wave function measures, matrix elements of observables, through quantities probing unitary quantum dynamics, to transport and quantum information measures. We give a comprehensive overview of these approaches and attempt to provide a unified understanding of their main features. We emphasize general trends towards ergodicity with increasing length and time scales, which exclude naive single-parameter scaling hypothesis, necessitate the use of more refined scaling procedures, and prevent unambiguous extrapolations of numerical results to the asymptotic limit. Providing a concise description of numerical methods for studying ETH and MBL, we explore various approaches to tackle the question of the MBL phase. Persistent finite size drifts towards ergodicity consistently emerge in quantities derived from eigenvalues and eigenvectors of disordered many-body systems. The drifts are related to continuous inching towards ergodicity and non-vanishing transport observed in the dynamics of many-body systems, even at strong disorder. These phenomena impede the understanding of microscopic processes at the ETH-MBL crossover. Nevertheless, the abrupt slowdown of dynamics with increasing disorder strength provides premises suggesting the proximity of the MBL phase. This review concludes that the questions about thermalization and its failure in disordered many-body systems remain a captivating area open for further explorations.
In the presence of strong enough disorder one-dimensional systems of interacting spinless fermions at nonzero filling factor are known to be in a many-body localized phase. When represented in `Fock space,' the Hamiltonian of such a system looks like that of a single `particle' hopping on a Fock lattice in the presence of a random disordered potential. The coordination number of the Fock lattice increases linearly with the system size L in one dimension. Thus in the thermodynamic limit $L\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$, the disordered interacting problem in one dimension maps on to an Anderson model with infinite coordination number. Despite this, this system displays localization which appears counterintuitive. A close observation of the on-site disorder potentials on the Fock lattice reveals a large degree of correlation among them as they are derived from an exponentially smaller number of on-site disorder potentials in real space. This indicates that the correlations between the on-site disorder potentials on a Fock lattice has a strong effect on the localization properties of the corresponding many-body system. This intuition is also consistent with studies of quantum random energy model where the typical mid-spectrum states are ergodic and the on-site potentials in Fock space are completely uncorrelated. In this work we perform a systematic quantitative exploration of the nature of correlations of the Fock space potential required for localization. We study different functional variations of the disorder correlation in Fock lattice by analyzing the eigenspectrum obtained through exact diagonalization. Without changing the typical strength of the on-site disorder potential in Fock lattice we show that changing the correlation strength can induce thermalization or localization in systems. From among the various forms of correlations we study, we find that only the linear variation of correlations with Hamming distance in Fock space is able to drive a thermal-MBL phase transition where the transition is driven by the correlation strength. Systems with the other forms of correlations we study are found to be ergodic.