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Slow scrambling in disordered quantum systems

Cornell Affiliated Author(s)

Author

B. Swingle
Debanjan Chowdhury

Abstract

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. © 2017 American Physical Society.

Date Published

Journal

Physical Review B

Volume

95

Issue

6

URL

https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85014510831&doi=10.1103%2fPhysRevB.95.060201&partnerID=40&md5=d6d3007edd8d20741bf752243484c511

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevB.95.060201

Group (Lab)

Debanjan Chowdhury Group

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