Ergodicity Breaking Transition in Finite Disordered Spin Chains
Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
2020-08-19 v1 Quantum Gases
Statistical Mechanics
Strongly Correlated Electrons
Quantum Physics
Abstract
We study disorder-induced ergodicity breaking transition in high-energy eigenstates of interacting spin-1/2 chains. Using exact diagonalization we introduce a cost function approach to quantitatively compare different scenarios for the eigenstate transition. We study ergodicity indicators such as the eigenstate entanglement entropy and the spectral level spacing ratio, and we consistently find that an (infinite-order) Kosterlitz-Thouless transition yields a lower cost function when compared to a finite-order transition. Interestingly, we observe that the transition point in finite systems exhibits nearly thermal properties, i.e., ergodicity indicators at the transition are close to the random matrix theory predictions.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2004.01719,
title = {Ergodicity Breaking Transition in Finite Disordered Spin Chains},
author = {Jan Šuntajs and Janez Bonča and Tomaž Prosen and Lev Vidmar},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.01719},
year = {2020}
}