Domain-wall melting as a probe of many-body localization

TL;DR

This paper explores how domain-wall melting can serve as an experimental probe for many-body localization, demonstrating its effectiveness in detecting localization transitions in both noninteracting and interacting fermion systems.

Contribution

It introduces a method using domain-wall melting to investigate many-body localization, validated through simulations and comparison with existing literature.

Findings

Measures are sensitive to localization in noninteracting models.

Critical disorder strengths match previous studies.

Simulations confirm the method's effectiveness.

Abstract

Motivated by a recent optical-lattice experiment by Choi et al.[Science 352, 1547 (2016)], we discuss how domain-wall melting can be used to investigate many-body localization. First, by considering noninteracting fermion models, we demonstrate that experimentally accessible measures are sensitive to localization and can thus be used to detect the delocalization-localization transition, including divergences of characteristic length scales. Second, using extensive time-dependent density matrix renormalization group simulations, we study fermions with repulsive interactions on a chain and a two-leg ladder. The extracted critical disorder strengths agree well with the ones found in existing literature.