Anomalous Thouless energy and critical statistics on the metallic side of the many-body localization transition

TL;DR

This paper investigates the spectral properties of a 1D disordered XXZ spin chain on the metallic side of the many-body localization transition, revealing anomalous energy scales and critical statistics that differ from non-interacting systems.

Contribution

It demonstrates the existence of an anomalous Thouless energy and critical spectral statistics in an interacting disordered system, challenging previous plasma model descriptions.

Findings

Number variance grows faster than linear with disorder-dependent exponent

Thouless energy is related to anomalous diffusion in the interacting system

Spectral correlations near the transition resemble those of high-dimensional Anderson models

Abstract

We study a one-dimensional (1d) XXZ spin-chain in a random field on the metallic side of the many-body localization transition by level statistics. For a fixed interaction, and intermediate disorder below the many-body localization transition, we find that, asymptotically, the number variance grows faster than linear with a disorder dependent exponent. This is consistent with the existence of an anomlaous Thouless energy in the spectrum. In non-interacting disordered metals this is an energy scale related to the typical time for a particle to diffuse across the sample. In the interacting case it seems related to a more intricate anomalous diffusion process. This interpretation is not fully consistent with recent claims that, for intermediate disorder, level statistics are described by a plasma model with power-law decaying interactions whose number variance grows slower than linear. As disorder is further increased, still on the metallic side, the Thouless energy is gradually washed out. In the range of sizes we can explore, level statistics are scale invariant and approach Poisson statistics at the many-body localization transition. Slightly below the many-body localization transition, spectral correlations, well described by critical statistics, are quantitatively similar to those of a high dimensional, non-interacting, disordered conductor at the Anderson transition.