Many-body Localized Phase Research Articles

Complexity measure diagnostics of ergodic to many-body localization transition

We introduce diagnostics of the transition between the ergodic and many-body localization phases, which are based on complexity measures defined via the probability distribution function of the Lanczos coefficients of the tridiagonalized Hamiltonian. We use these complexity measures to analyze the power-law random banded matrix model as a function of the correlation strength and show that the moments and the entropy of the distribution diagnose the ergodic to many-body transition, as well as the distinctive feature of the phases concerning the memory of the initial conditions. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Many-body-localization protection of eigenstate topological order in two dimensions

Many-body localization (MBL) has been proposed to enable and protect topological order in all eigenstates, vastly expanding the traditional ground-state setting. However, for the most intriguing case of two-dimensional (2D) systems with anyons and topology-dependent degeneracies, the dense many-body spectrum challenges studying this MBL protection numerically. Here we use large-scale full-spectrum variational to demonstrate MBL-protected topological order in the disordered 2D toric code perturbed by magnetic fields. We show that the system has topological local integrals of motion (tLIOMs) for magnetic field strengths below hc≈0.1 times the toric-code coupling scale. Combining tLIOMs with exact diagonalization, we also identify high-energy topological multiplets in the dense many-body spectrum. The phase diagram we find is consistent with toric-code and trivial MBL phases being separated by an intervening thermal phase. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Interacting local topological markers: A one-particle density matrix approach for characterizing the topology of interacting and disordered states

While topology is a property of a quantum state itself, most existing methods for characterizing the topology of interacting phases of matter require direct knowledge of the underlying Hamiltonian. We offer an alternative by utilizing the one-particle density matrix formalism to extend the concept of the Chern, chiral, and Chern-Simons markers to include interactions. The one-particle density matrix of a free-fermion state is a projector onto the occupied bands, defining a Brillouin zone bundle of the given topological class. This is no longer the case in the interacting limit, but as long as the one-particle density matrix is gapped, its spectrum can be adiabatically flattened, connecting it to a topologically equivalent projector. The corresponding topological markers thus characterize the topology of the interacting phase. Importantly, the one-particle density matrix is defined in terms of a given state alone, making the local markers numerically favorable, and providing a valuable tool for characterizing topology of interacting systems when only the state itself is available. To demonstrate the practical use of the markers we use the chiral marker to identify the topology of midspectrum eigenstates of the Ising-Majorana chain across the transition between the ergodic and many-body localized phases. We also apply the chiral marker to random states with a known topology, and compare it with the entanglement spectrum degeneracy. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Disorder free many-body localization transition in two quasiperiodically coupled Heisenberg spin chains

Disorder free many-body localization (MBL) can occur in interacting systems that can dynamically generate their own disorder. We address the thermal-MBL phase transition of two isotropic Heisenberg spin chains that are quasiperiodically coupled to each other. The spin chains are incommensurate and are coupled through a short-range exchange interaction of the XXZ type that decays exponentially with the distance. Using exact diagonalization, matrix product states, and a density matrix renormalization group, we calculate the time evolution of the entanglement entropy at long times and extract the inverse participation ratio in the thermodynamic limit. We show that this system has a robust MBL phase. We establish the phase diagram with the onset of MBL as a function of the interchain exchange coupling and of the incommensuration between the spin chains. The Ising limit of the interchain interaction optimizes the stability of the MBL phase over a broad range of incommensurations above a given critical exchange coupling. Incorporation of interchain spin flips significantly enhances entanglement between the spin chains and produces delocalization, favoring a prethermal phase whose entanglement entropy grows logarithmically with time. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Prolonging a discrete time crystal by quantum-classical feedback

Nonequilibrium phases of quantum matter featuring time crystalline eigenstate order have been realized recently on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices. While ideal quantum time crystals exhibit collective subharmonic oscillations and spatiotemporal long-range order persisting for infinite times, the decoherence time of current NISQ devices sets a natural limit to the survival of these phases, restricting their observation to a shallow quantum circuit. Here we propose a time-periodic scheme that leverages quantum-classical feedback protocols in subregions of the system to enhance a time crystal signal significantly exceeding the decoherence time of the device. As a case of study, we demonstrate the survival of the many-body localized discrete time crystal phase in the one-dimensional periodically kicked Ising model, accounting for decoherence of the system with an environment. Based on classical simulation of quantum circuit realizations we find that this approach is suitable for implementation on existing quantum hardware and presents a prospective path to simulate complex quantum many-body dynamics that transcend the low depth limit of current digital quantum computers. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Time crystal embodies chimeralike state in periodically driven quantum spin system

Chimera states are a captivating occurrence in which a system composed of multiple interconnected elements exhibits a distinctive combination of synchronized and desynchronized behavior. The emergence of these states can be attributed to the complex interdependence between quantum entanglement and the delicate balance of interactions among system constituents. The emergence of discrete-time crystal (DTC) in typical many-body periodically driven systems occurs when there is a breaking of time translation symmetry. Coexisting coupled DTC and a ferromagnetic dynamically many-body localized (DMBL) phase at distinct regions have been investigated under the controlled spin rotational error of a disorder-free spin-1/2 chain for different types of spin-spin interactions. We contribute a novel approach for the emergence of the DTC-DMBL-chimeralike state, which is robust against external static fields in a periodically driven quantum many-body system.

Stable many-body localization under random continuous measurements in the no-click limit

In this work, we investigate the localization properties of a paradigmatic model, coupled to a monitoring environment and possessing a many-body localized (MBL) phase. We focus on the postselected no-click limit with quench random rates, i.e., random gains and losses. In this limit, the system is modeled by adding an imaginary random potential, rendering non-Hermiticity in the system. Numerically, we provide evidence that the system is localized for any finite amount of disorder. To analytically understand our results, we extend the quantum random energy model (QREM) to the non-Hermitian scenario. The Hermitian QREM has been used previously as a benchmark model for MBL. The QREM exhibits a size-dependent MBL transition, where the critical value scales as Wc∼LlnL with system size and presenting many-body mobility edges. We reveal that the non-Hermitian QREM with random gain-loss offers a significantly stronger form of localization, evident in the nature of the many-body mobility edges and the value for the transition, which scales as Wc∼ln1/2L with the system size. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Statics and dynamics of non-Hermitian many-body localization

Many-body localized phases retain memory of their initial conditions in disordered interacting systems with unitary dynamics. The stability of the localized phase due to the breakdown of unitarity is of relevance to experiment in the presence of dissipation. Here we investigate the impact of non-Hermitian perturbations on many-body localization. We focus on the interacting Hatano-Nelson model which breaks unitarity via asymmetric hopping. We explore the phase diagram for the mid-spectrum eigenstates as a function of the interaction strength and the non-Hermiticity. In contrast to the non-interacting case, our findings are consistent with a two-step approach to the localized regime. We also study the dynamics of the particle imbalance. We show that the distribution of relaxation time scales differs qualitatively between the localized and ergodic phases. Our findings suggest the possibility of an intermediate dynamical regime in disordered open systems.

Enhanced many-body localization in a kinetically constrained model.

In the study of the thermalization of closed quantum systems, the role of kinetic constraints on the temporal dynamics and the eventual thermalization is attracting significant interest. Kinetic constraints typically lead to long-lived metastable states depending on initial conditions. We consider a model of interacting hardcore bosons with an additional kinetic constraint that was originally devised to capture glassy dynamics at high densities. As a main result, we demonstrate that the system is highly prone to localization in the presence of uncorrelated disorder. Adding disorder quickly triggers long-lived dynamics as evidenced in the time evolution of density autocorrelations. Moreover, the kinetic constraint favors localization also in the eigenstates, where a finite-size transition to a many-body localized phase occurs for much lower disorder strengths than for the same model without a kinetic constraint. Our work sheds light on the intricate interplay of kinetic constraints and localization and may provide additional control over many-body localized phases in the time domain.

Controlling quantum many-body systems using reduced-order modeling

Quantum many-body control is among the most challenging problems in quantum science due to its outstanding computational complexity in a general case. We propose an efficient approach to a class of many-body quantum control problems, where time-dependent controls are applied to a sufficiently small subsystem. The method employs a tensor-network scheme to construct a reduced-order model of a subsystem's non-Markovian dynamics. The resulting reduced-order model serves as a digital twin of the original subsystem. Such twins allow significantly more efficient dynamics simulation, which enables the use of a gradient-based optimization toolbox in the control parameter space. This approach to building control protocols takes advantage of non-Markovian dynamics of subsystems by design. We validate the proposed method by solving control problems for quantum spin chains. In particular, the approach automatically identifies control sequences for exciting and guiding quasiparticles to recover and transmit quantum information across the system. In addition, we find generalized spin-echo sequences for a system in a many-body localized phase enabling significant revivals. We expect our approach can be useful for ongoing experiments with noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Anomalous localization in a kicked quasicrystal

Quantum transport can distinguish between dynamical phases of matter. For instance, ballistic propagation characterizes the absence of disorder, whereas in many-body localized phases, particles do not propagate for exponentially long times. Additional possibilities include states of matter exhibiting anomalous transport in which particles propagate with a non-trivial exponent. Here we report the experimental observation of anomalous transport across a broad range of the phase diagram of a kicked quasicrystal. The Hamiltonian of our system has been predicted to exhibit a rich phase diagram, including not only fully localized and fully delocalized phases but also an extended region comprising a nested pattern of localized, delocalized and multifractal states, which gives rise to anomalous transport. Our cold-atom realization is enabled by new Floquet engineering techniques, which expand the accessible phase diagram by five orders of magnitude. Mapping transport properties throughout the phase diagram, we observe disorder-driven re-entrant delocalization and sub-ballistic transport, and we present a theoretical explanation of these phenomena based on eigenstate multifractality.

Critical states and anomalous mobility edges in two-dimensional diagonal quasicrystals

We study the single-particle properties of two-dimensional quasicrystals where the underlying geometry of the tight-binding lattice is crystalline but the on-site potential is quasicrystalline. We will focus on the two-dimensional (2D) generalized Aubry-André model which has a varying form to its quasiperiodic potential, through a deformation parameter and varied irrational periods of cosine terms, which allows a continuous family of on-site quasicrystalline models to be studied. We show that the 2D generalized Aubry-André model exhibits many single-particle mobility edges which we confirm for finite systems and supports critical states across large parameter regions. Critical states are neither fully localized nor extended. We observe that diagonal quasicrystalline models can support many energy intervals of critical states in the spectrum while stabilizing both localized and extended states in other energy intervals; we refer to these as anomalous mobility edges. We show that critical states are present independent of system size through a scaling analysis of the inverse participation ratio and that they are present in spectra that also contain extended and localized states, confirming that at least one anomalous mobility edge is present. Due to this, these models exhibit anomalous diffusion of initially localized states across the majority of parameter regions, including deep in the normally localized regime. The presence of critical states in large parameter regimes and throughout the spectrum will have consequences for the many-body properties of quasicrystals, including the formation of the Bose glass and the potential to host a many-body localized phase. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Anatomy of the eigenstates distribution: A quest for a genuine multifractality

Motivated by a series of recent works, an interest in multifractal phases has risen as they are believed to be present in the Many-Body Localized (MBL) phase and are of high demand in quantum annealing and machine learning. Inspired by the success of the Rosenzweig-Porter (RP) model with Gaussian-distributed hopping elements, several RP-like ensembles with the fat-tailed distributed hopping terms have been proposed, with claims that they host the desired multifractal phase. In the present work, we develop a general (graphical) approach allowing a self-consistent analytical calculation of fractal dimensions for a generic RP model and investigate what features of the RP Hamiltonians can be responsible for the multifractal phase emergence. We conclude that the only feature contributing to a genuine multifractality is the on-site energies’ distribution, meaning that no random matrix model with a statistically homogeneous distribution of diagonal disorder and uncorrelated off-diagonal terms can host a multifractal phase.

Imperfect many-body localization in exchange-disordered isotropic spin chains

We investigate many-body localization in isotropic Heisenberg spin chains with the local exchange parameters being subject to quenched disorder. Such systems incorporate a nonabelian symmetry in their Hamiltonian by invariance under global SU(2)-rotations. Nonabelian symmetries are predicted to hinder the emergence of a many-body localized phase even in the presence of strong disorder. We report on numerical studies using exact diagonalization for chains of common spin length and 1. The averaged consecutive-gap ratios display a transition compatible with a crossover from an ergodic phase at small disorder strength to an incompletely localized phase at stronger disorder. Studying the sample-to-sample variance of the averaged consecutive-gap ratio, we distinguish this incompletely localized phase from the fully many-body localized phase by its scaling behavior.

Sunburst quantum Ising model under interaction quench: Entanglement and role of initial state coherence.

We study the nonequilibrium dynamics of an isolated bipartite quantum system, the sunburst quantum Ising model, under interaction quench. The prequench limit of this model is two noninteracting integrable systems, namely a transverse Ising chain and finite number of isolated qubits. As a function of interaction strength, the spectral fluctuation property goes from Poisson to Wigner-Dyson statistics. We chose entanglement entropy as a probe to study the approach to thermalization or lack of it in postquench dynamics. In the near-integrable limit, as expected, the linear entropy displays oscillatory behavior, while in the chaotic limit it saturates. Along with the chaotic nature of the time evolution generator, we show the importance of the role played by the coherence of the initial state in deciding the nature of thermalization. We further show that these findings are general by replacing the Ising ring with a disordered XXZ model with disorder strength putting it in the many-body localized phase.

Renormalization view on resonance proliferation between many-body localized phases

Renormalization view on resonance proliferation between many-body localized phases

Non-Hermitian skin effects on thermal and many-body localized phases

Non-Hermitian skin effects on thermal and many-body localized phases

Stability and dynamics of many-body localized systems coupled to a small bath

It is known that strong disorder in closed quantum systems leads to many-body localization (MBL), and that this quantum phase can be destroyed by coupling to an infinitely large Markovian environment. However, the stability of the MBL phase is less clear when the system and environment are of finite and comparable size. Here, we study the stability and eventual localization properties of a disordered Heisenberg spin chain coupled to a finite environment, and extensively explore the effects of environment disorder, geometry, initial state, and system-bath coupling strength, using the steady-state value of magnetization as a probe. Focusing on nonequilibrium dynamics and steady-state properties, our results indicate that within system sizes amenable to exact diagonalization, a strongly localized system interacting in a junction configuration retains remnant information on its initial state at long times despite coupling to a finite ergodic environment. In contrast, in a ladder configuration, strong dependencies on the initial state and coupling strength are observed, which can lead to either the loss or retention of information. Finally, we highlight and discuss discrepancies that can arise when similar methodologies are employed to infer localization or thermalization, revealing the need for careful interpretation.

Diagnostics of nonergodic extended states and many body localization proximity effect through real-space and Fock-space excitations

We provide real-space and Fock-space (FS) characterizations of ergodic, nonergodic extended (NEE) and many-body localized (MBL) phases in an interacting quasiperiodic system, namely, the generalized Aubry-Andr\'e-Harper model, which possesses a mobility edge in the noninteracting limit. We show that a mobility edge in the single-particle (SP) excitations survives even in the presence of interaction in the NEE phase. In contrast, all single-particle excitations get localized in the MBL phase due to the MBL proximity effect. We give complementary insights into the distinction of the NEE states from the ergodic and MBL states by computing local FS self-energies and decay length associated, respectively, with the local and the nonlocal FS propagators. Based on a finite-size scaling analysis of the typical local self-energy across the NEE to ergodic transition, we show that MBL and NEE states exhibit qualitatively similar multifractal character. However, we find that the NEE and MBL states can be distinguished in terms of the distribution of local self-energy and the decay of the nonlocal propagator in the FS, whereas the typical local FS self-energy cannot tell them apart.

Multibody expansion of the local integrals of motion: how many pairs of particle-hole do we really need to describe the quasiparticles in the many-body localized phase?

The emergent integrability in a many-body localized (MBL) system can be well characterized by the existence of the complete set of local integrals of motion (LIOMs). Such exactly conserved and exponentially localized operators are often understood as quasiparticle operators which can be expanded in terms of single-particle operators dressed with different numbers of particle-hole pairs. Here, we consider a one-dimensional XXZ spin- Heisenberg chain in the presence of a random field and try to quantify the corrections needed to be considered in the picture of quasiparticles associated with LIOMs due to the presence of particle-hole excitations. To this end, we explicitly present the multibody expansion of LIOM creation operators of the system in the MBL regime. We analytically obtain the coefficients of this expansion and discuss the effect of higher-order corrections associated with different numbers of particle-hole excitations. Our analysis shows that depending on the localization length of the system, there exist a regime in which the contributions that come from higher-order terms can break down the effective one-particle description of the LIOMs and such quasiparticles become essentially many-body-like.