Numerical study of the temperature dependence of the NMR relaxation rate across the superfluid–Bose glass transition in one dimension

Abstract

We study the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spin-lattice relaxation rate $1/T_1$ in random one-dimensional spin chains as function of the temperature and disorder strength. In the zero temperature limit, the system displays a disorder-induced quantum phase transition between a critical Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) phase and a localized Bose glass phase. The $1/T_1$ is investigated across this transition using large-scale simulations based on matrix product state techniques. We find that this quantity can detect the transition and probe the value of the dimensionless TLL parameter $K$. We also compute the NMR relaxation rate distributions for each temperature and disorder strength considered. In particular we discuss the applicability of the stretched exponential fit to the return-to-equilibrium function in order to extract the $1/T_1$ experimentally. The results presented here should provide valuable insights in regards of future NMR experiments in realistic disordered spin compounds.