English

Many-Body Localization: Stability and Instability

Mathematical Physics 2017-11-22 v2 Disordered Systems and Neural Networks math.MP Spectral Theory

Abstract

Rare regions with weak disorder (Griffiths regions) have the potential to spoil localization. We describe a non-perturbative construction of local integrals of motion (LIOMs) for a weakly interacting spin chain in one dimension, under a physically reasonable assumption on the statistics of eigenvalues. We discuss ideas about the situation in higher dimensions, where one can no longer ensure that interactions involving the Griffiths regions are much smaller than the typical energy-level spacing for such regions. We argue that ergodicity is restored in dimension d > 1, although equilibration should be extremely slow, similar to the dynamics of glasses.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1705.00756,
  title  = {Many-Body Localization: Stability and Instability},
  author = {Wojciech De Roeck and John Z. Imbrie},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1705.00756},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

17 pages, 8 figures. Added section 5. To appear, Phil. Trans. A

R2 v1 2026-06-22T19:33:25.662Z