Typical growth behavior of the out-of-time-ordered commutator in many-body localized systems

Abstract

We investigate the typicality of the growth behavior of the out-of-time-ordered commutator (OTOC) in the many-body localized (MBL) quantum spin chains across random disorder realizations. In the MBL phase of the Heisenberg XXZ chain, we find that the estimate of the OTOC fluctuates significantly with the disorder realizations at the intermediate times of the main growth. Despite the consequent failure of the disorder average in the MBL phase, we argue that the characteristic behavior of the OTOC growth can still be identified by going through individual disorder realizations. We find that a power-law-type growth behavior appears typically after a disorder-dependent relaxation period, which is very close to the $t^2$ form derived in the effective Hamiltonian of a fully MBL system. The characteristic growth behavior observed at an individual disorder realization is robust in our tests with various state preparations and also verified in another MBL system of the random-transverse-field quantum Ising chain in a uniform longitudinal field.