Decay of density waves in coupled one-dimensional many-body-localized systems

TL;DR

This paper investigates how interactions cause decay of density waves in coupled disordered one-dimensional fermionic systems, revealing that even strong disorder cannot prevent decay due to inter-chain coupling effects.

Contribution

The study derives explicit decay rates for density waves in coupled disordered chains, highlighting the role of interactions and inter-chain hopping in many-body localization breakdown.

Findings

Decay rate increases with inter-chain hopping t'

Decay rate decreases with increasing disorder

Finite decay persists even at large disorder levels

Abstract

The behavior of coupled disordered one-dimensional systems, as modelled by identical fermionic Hubbard chains with the on-site potential disorder and coupling emerging through the inter-chain hopping $t'$, is analysed. The study is motivated by the experiment on fermionic cold atoms on a disordered lattice, where a decay rate of the quenched density wave was measured. We present a derivation of the decay rate $\Gamma$ within perturbation theory and show that even at large disorder along the chains the interaction leads to finite $\Gamma > 0$, the mechanism being the interaction-induced coupling of in-chain localized and inter-chain extended single-fermion states. Explicit expressions for $\Gamma$ are presented for a weak interaction $U < t,t'$, but extended also to the regime $t > U >t'$. It is shown that in both regimes $\Gamma$ increases with the inter-chain hopping $t'$, as well as decreases with increasing disorder.