Title | Logarithmic entanglement lightcone in many-body localized systems |
Publication Type | Journal Article |
Year of Publication | 2017 |
Authors | D-L. Deng, X. Li, J.. H. Pixley, Y-. Le Wu, and S. Das Sarma |
Journal | PHYSICAL REVIEW B |
Volume | 95 |
Pagination | 024202 |
Date Published | JAN 10 |
ISSN | 2469-9950 |
Abstract | We theoretically study the response of a many-body localized system to a local quench from a quantum information perspective. We find that the local quench triggers entanglement growth throughout the whole system, giving rise to a logarithmic lightcone. This saturates the modified Lieb-Robinson bound for quantum information propagation in many-body localized systems previously conjectured based on the existence of local integrals of motion. In addition, near the localization-delocalization transition, we find that the final states after the local quench exhibit volume-law entanglement. We also show that the local quench induces a deterministic orthogonality catastrophe for highly excited eigenstates, where the typical wave-function overlap between the pre- and postquench eigenstates decays exponentially with the system size. |
DOI | 10.1103/PhysRevB.95.024202 |