Slow growth of entanglement and out-of-time-order correlators in integrable disordered systems
File(s)
Working paper
Author(s)
McGinley, M
Nunnenkamp, A
Knolle, J
Type
Working Paper
Abstract
We investigate how information spreads in three paradigmatic one-dimensional models with spatial disorder. The models we consider are unitarily related to a system of free fermions and are thus manifestly integrable. A slow logarithmic-in-time growth of the entanglement entropy is observed following a quench from an unentangled initial state. We attribute this growth to the presence of strong zero modes, which gives rise to an exponential hierarchy of time scales upon ensemble averaging. We also demonstrate that out-of-time-order correlators can spread slowly beyond the single-particle localization length, atypical for Anderson localized systems. This phenomenon is shown to be due to the nonlocal relationship between elementary excitations and the physical degrees of freedom. We argue that this non-locality becomes relevant when considering time-dependent correlation functions. Our work on disordered integrable systems complements the rich phenomenology of information spreading and we discuss broader implications for general systems with non-local correlations.
Date Issued
2019-01-16
Copyright Statement
© 2018 The Author(s).
Identifier
http://arxiv.org/abs/1807.06039v1
Subjects
cond-mat.str-el
cond-mat.dis-nn
cond-mat.mes-hall
cond-mat.stat-mech
Notes
5 + 5 pages, 2 figures