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Bimodal entanglement entropy distribution in the many-body localization transition

Journal Article · · Physical Review. B
 [1];  [2];  [2]
  1. Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States); DOE/OSTI
  2. Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States)
We introduce the cut-averaged entanglement entropy in disordered periodic spin chains and prove it to be a concave function of subsystem size for individual eigenstates. This allows us to identify the entanglement scaling as a function of subsystem size for individual states in inhomogeneous systems. Using this quantity, we probe the critical region between the many-body localized (MBL) and ergodic phases in finite systems. In the middle of the spectrum, we show evidence for bimodality of the entanglement distribution in the MBL critical region, finding both volume law and area law eigenstates over disorder realizations as well as within single disorder realizations. The disorder-averaged entanglement entropy in this region then scales as a volume law with a coefficient below its thermal value. We discover in the critical region, as we approach the thermodynamic limit, that the cut-averaged entanglement entropy density falls on a one-parameter family of curves. Finally, we also show that without averaging over cuts the slope of the entanglement entropy vs subsystem size can be negative at intermediate and strong disorder, caused by rare localized regions in the system.
Research Organization:
Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE; USDOE Office of Science (SC)
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0008692
OSTI ID:
1535788
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1332141
Journal Information:
Physical Review. B, Journal Name: Physical Review. B Journal Issue: 18 Vol. 94; ISSN 2469-9950
Publisher:
American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Critical Properties of the Many-Body Localization Transition text January 2016
Rare region effects and dynamics near the many-body localization transition text January 2016
Scaling Theory of Entanglement at the Many-Body Localization Transition text January 2017
Two universality classes for the many-body localization transition text January 2017
Many-Body Localization in Spin Chain Systems with Quasiperiodic Fields text January 2017
Strong Disorder Renormalization for the dynamics of Many-Body-Localized systems : iterative elimination of the fastest degree of freedom via the Floquet expansion text January 2017
Machine learning out-of-equilibrium phases of matter text January 2017
Signatures of the Many-body Localized Regime in Two Dimensions text January 2017