Christian P. Chen | Searcharxiv

arXiv2021

Fock-space geometry and strong correlations in many-body localized systems

We adopt a geometric perspective on Fock space to provide two complementary insights into the eigenstates in many-body-localized fermionic systems. On the one hand, individual many-bodylocalized eigenstates are well approximated by a Slater determinant of single-particle orbitals. On the other hand, the orbitals of different eigenstates in a given system display a varying, and generally imperfect, degree of compatibility, as we quantify by a measure based on the projectors onto the corresponding single-particle subspaces. We study this incompatibility between states of fixed and differing particle number, as well as inside and outside the many-body-localized regime. This gives detailed insights into the emergence and strongly correlated nature of quasiparticle-like excitations in many-body localized systems, revealing intricate correlations between states of different particle number down to the level of individual realizations.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2020

Many-body localization of zero modes

The celebrated Dyson singularity signals the relative delocalization of single-particle wave functions at the zero-energy symmetry point of disordered systems with a chiral symmetry. Here we show that analogous zero modes in interacting quantum systems can fully localize at sufficiently large disorder, but do so less strongly than nonzero modes, as signifed by their real-space and Fock-space localization characteristics. We demonstrate this effect in a spin-1 Ising chain, which naturally provides a chiral symmetry in an odd-dimensional Hilbert space, thereby guaranteeing the existence of a many-body zero mode at all disorder strengths. In the localized phase, the bipartite entanglement entropy of the zero mode follows an area law, but is enhanced by a system-size-independent factor of order unity when compared to the nonzero modes. Analytically, this feature can be attributed to a specific zero-mode hybridization pattern on neighboring spins. The zero mode also displays a symmetry-induced even-odd and spin-orientation fragmentation of excitations, characterized by real-space spin correlation functions, which generalizes the sublattice polarization of topological zero modes in noninteracting systems, and holds at any disorder strength.

cond-mat.str-el↗