Slow delocalization of particles in many-body localized phases

We have recently shown that the logarithmic growth of the entanglement entropy following a quantum quench in a many-body localized phase is accompanied by a slow growth of the number entropy S-N similar to In ln t. Here we provide an in-depth numerical study of SN (t) for the disordered Heisenberg chain and show that this behavior is not transient and persists even for very strong disorder. Calculating the truncated Renyi number entropy S-N((alpha)) (t) = (1 - alpha)(-1) In Sigma(n) p(alpha)(n) for alpha << 1 and p(n) > p(c)-which is sensitive to large number fluctuations occurring with low probability-we demonstrate that the particle number distribution p(n) in one half of the system has a continuously growing tail. This indicates a slow but steady increase in the number of particles crossing between the partitions in the interacting case and is in sharp contrast to Anderson localization for which we show that S-N((alpha -> 0)) (t) saturates for any cutoff p(c) > 0. We show, furthermore, that the growth of SN is not the consequence of rare states or rare regions but rather represents typical behavior. These findings indicate that the interacting system is never fully localized even for very strong but finite disorder.

Automated summary

Through a detailed study of the number entropy SN(t), we find that in a many-body localized phase, the particle number distribution shows a continuously growing tail, indicating that the interacting system never fully localizes even under strong disorder. This behavior is not the result of rare states or regions, but rather represents typical behavior.