Many-body localization and the area law in two dimensions

• Main Authors: Decker, Kevin S. C, Kennes, Dante M, Karrasch, Christoph
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 23-11-2022
• Subjects: Physics - Disordered Systems and Neural Networks; Physics - Statistical Mechanics
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2106.12861

Phys. Rev. B 106, L180201 (2022) We study the high-energy phase diagram of a two-dimensional
spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ Heisenberg model on a square lattice in the presence of
either quenched or quasiperiodic disorder. The use of large-scale tensor
network numerics allows us to compute the bipartite entanglement entropy for
systems of up to $60 \times 7$ lattice sites. We provide evidence for the
existence of a many-body localized regime for large disorder strength that
features an area law in excited states and that violates the eigenstate
thermalization hypothesis. From a finite-size analysis, we determine an
estimate for the critical disorder strength where the transition to the ergodic
regime occurs in the quenched case.