English

Many body localization transition with correlated disorder

Disordered Systems and Neural Networks 2022-10-18 v2 Statistical Mechanics Strongly Correlated Electrons Quantum Physics

Abstract

We address the critical properties of the many-body localization (MBL) phase transition in one-dimensional systems subject to spatially correlated disorder. We consider a general family of disorder models, parameterized by how strong the fluctuations of the disordered couplings are when coarse-grained over a region of size \ell. For uncorrelated randomness, the characteristic scale for these fluctuations is \sqrt{\ell}; more generally they scale as γ\ell^\gamma. We discuss both positively correlated disorder (1/2<γ<11/2 < \gamma < 1) and anticorrelated, or "hyperuniform," disorder (γ<1/2\gamma < 1/2). We argue that anticorrelations in the disorder are generally irrelevant at the MBL transition. Moreover, assuming the MBL transition is described by the recently developed renormalization-group scheme of Morningstar \emph{et al.} [Phys. Rev. B 102, 125134, (2020)], we argue that even positively correlated disorder leaves the critical theory unchanged, although it modifies certain properties of the many-body localized phase.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2204.06017,
  title  = {Many body localization transition with correlated disorder},
  author = {Zhengyan Darius Shi and Vedika Khemani and Romain Vasseur and Sarang Gopalakrishnan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2204.06017},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

25 pages, including 9 figures, 1 table, and 3 appendices (additional reference added in v2)

R2 v1 2026-06-24T10:46:16.724Z