Slow scrambling in disordered quantum systems

• Main Authors: Swingle, Brian (Author), Chowdhury, Debanjan (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Physical Society, 2017-03-09T15:38:59Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

In this work we study the effect of static disorder on the growth of commutators-a probe of information scrambling in quantum many-body systems-in a variety of contexts. We find generically that disorder slows the onset of scrambling and, in the case of a many-body localized (MBL) state, partially halts it. In the MBL state, we show using a fixed point Hamiltonian that operators exhibit slow logarithmic growth under time evolution and compare the result with the expected growth of commutators in (de)localized noninteracting disordered models. Finally, using a scaling argument, we state a conjecture on the growth of commutators in a weakly interacting diffusive metal.
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (EPiQS Initiative Grant GBMF-4303)