Spatio-temporal heterogeneity of entanglement in many-body localized systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a spatio-temporal approach to analyze entanglement in many-body localized systems, revealing dynamical heterogeneity and correlated clusters similar to classical glasses, with implications for understanding quantum dynamics.

Contribution

It presents a novel spatio-temporal characterization of entanglement in MBL systems, uncovering dynamical heterogeneity and entanglement length scales not previously identified.

Findings

Entanglement relaxation times are spatially correlated, defining a quantum entanglement length scale.

MBL systems consist of dynamically correlated clusters with varying activity levels.

Disorder and initial state energy influence the distribution and correlation of relaxation times.

Abstract

We propose a spatio-temporal characterization of the entanglement dynamics in many-body localized (MBL) systems, which exhibits a striking resemblance with dynamical heterogeneity in classical glasses. Specifically, we find that the relaxation times of local entanglement, as measured by the concurrence, are spatially correlated yielding a dynamical length scale for quantum entanglement. As a consequence of this spatio-temporal analysis, we observe that the considered MBL system is made up of dynamically correlated clusters with a size set by this entanglement length scale. The system decomposes into compartments of different activity such as active regions with fast quantum entanglement dynamics and inactive regions where the dynamics is slow. We further find that the relaxation times of the on-site concurrence become broader distributed and more spatially correlated, as disorder increases or the energy of the initial state decreases. Through this spatio-temporal characterization of entanglement, our work unravels a previously unrecognized connection between the behavior of classical glasses and the genuine quantum dynamics of MBL systems.