Many-body localization in disorder-free systems: The importance of finite-size constraints

Zlatko Papić, E. Miles Stoudenmire, Dmitry A. Abanin

Elmer V. H. Doggen, I. V. Gornyi, A. D. Mirlin +1 more

Yang Zhao, Rajesh Narayanan, Jaeyoon Cho

Nonequilibrium dynamics in isolated quantum many-body systems displays a number of intriguing features, such as many-body localization (MBL) and prethermalization. Here we investigate a simple ladder system with disorder, in which various distinct dynamical features coexist and interplay. By exact diagonalization, we demonstrate that the system exhibits the signatures of an MBL-ergodic-MBL reentrant transition, metastability, and disorder-free MBL. We give an account of these properties by introducing a quasiparticle picture and interpreting the quasivacuum energy fluctuation as an effective disorder on the quasi-particle dynamics. It is speculated that the weak perturbation behavior is a finite-size effect, but its relaxation timescale increases with the system size.

Pietro Brighi, Marko Ljubotina, Federico Roccati +1 more

Non-Hermitian many-body localization (NH MBL) has emerged as a possible scenario for stable localization in open systems, as suggested by spectral indicators identifying a putative transition for finite system sizes. In this work, we shift the focus to dynamical probes, specifically the steady-state spin current, to investigate transport properties in a disordered, non-Hermitian XXZ spin chain. Through exact diagonalization for small systems and tensor-network methods for larger chains, we demonstrate that the steady-state current remains finite and decays exponentially with disorder strength, showing no evidence of a transition up to disorder values far beyond the previously claimed critical point. Our results reveal a stark discrepancy between spectral indicators, which suggest localization, and transport behavior, which indicates delocalization. This highlights the importance of dynamical observables in characterizing NH MBL and suggests that traditional spectral measures may not fully capture the physics of non-Hermitian systems. Additionally, we observe a noncommutativity of limits in system size and time, further complicating the interpretation of finite-size studies. These findings challenge the existence of NH MBL in the studied model and underscore the need for alternative approaches to understanding localization in non-Hermitian settings.

Christian Groß

Ranjan Modak, Tanay Nag

We develop a real-space renormalization-group (RSRG) scheme by appropriately inserting the long-range hopping t∼r^{-α} with nearest-neighbor interaction to study the entanglement entropy and maximum block size for the many-body localization (MBL) transition. We show that for α<2 there exists a localization transition with renormalized disorder that depends logarithmically on the finite size of the system. The transition observed for α>2 does not need a rescaling in disorder strength. Most important, we find that even though the MBL transition for α>2 falls in the same universality class as that of the short-range models, the transition for α<2 belongs to a different universality class. Because of the intrinsic nature of the RSRG flow toward delocalization, MBL phase for α>2 might suffer an instability in the thermodynamic limit while the underlying systems support algebraic localization. Moreover, we verify these findings by inserting microscopic details to the RSRG scheme where we additionally find a more appropriate rescaling function for disorder strength; we indeed uncover a power-law scaling with a logarithmic correction and a distinctly different stretched exponential scaling for α<2 and α>2, respectively, by analyzing system with finite size. This finding further suggests that microscopic RSRG scheme is able to give a hint of instability of the MBL phase for α>2 even considering systems of finite size.