Effects of autocorrelated disorder on the dynamics in the vicinity of the many-body localization transition

The presence of frozen uncorrelated random on-site potential in interacting quantum systems can induce a transition from an ergodic phase to a localized one, the so-called many-body localization. Here we numerically study the effects of autocorrelated disorder on the static and dynamical properties of a one-dimensional many -body quantum system which exhibits many-body localization. Specifically, by means of some standard measures of energy level repulsion and localization of energy eigenstates, we show that a strong degree of correlations between the on-site potentials in the one-dimensional spin-1/2 Heisenberg model leads to suppression of the many-body localization phase, while level repulsion is mitigated for small disorder strengths, although energy eigenstates remain well extended. Our findings are also remarkably manifested in the time domain, on which we put the main emphasis, as shown by the time evolution of experimentally relevant observables, like the return probability and the spin autocorrelation function.

Automated summary

This study numerically investigates the effects of autocorrelated disorder on a one-dimensional many-body localized quantum system, and finds that strong correlations between on-site potentials suppress the many-body localized phase.