Probing many-body localization with neural networks

We show that a simple artificial neural network trained on entanglement spectra of individual states of a many-body quantum system can be used to determine the transition between a many-body localized and a thermalizing regime. Specifically, we study the Heisenberg spin-1/2 chain in a random external field. We employ a multilayer perceptron with a single hidden layer, which is trained on labeled entanglement spectra pertaining to the fully localized and fully thermal regimes. We then apply this network to classify spectra belonging to states in the transition region. For training, we use a cost function that contains, in addition to the usual error and regularization parts, a term that favors a confident classification of the transition region states. The resulting phase diagram is in good agreement with the one obtained by more conventional methods and can be computed for small systems. In particular, the neural network outperforms conventional methods in classifying individual eigenstates pertaining to a single disorder realization. It allows us to map out the structure of these eigenstates across the transition with spatial resolution. Furthermore, we analyze the network operation using the dreaming technique to show that the neural network correctly learns by itself the power-law structure of the entanglement spectra in the many-body localized regime.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figure

M\"obius molecules and fragile Mott insulators

Motivated by the concept of M\"obius aromatics in organic chemistry, we extend the recently introduced concept of fragile Mott insulators (FMI) to ring-shaped molecules with repulsive Hubbard interactions threaded by a half-quantum of magnetic flux ($hc/2e$). In this context, a FMI is the insulating ground state of a finite-size molecule that cannot be adiabatically connected to a single Slater determinant, i.e., to a band insulator, provided that time-reversal and lattice translation symmetries are preserved. Based on exact numerical diagonalization for finite Hubbard interaction strength $U$ and existing Bethe-ansatz studies of the one-dimensional Hubbard model in the large-$U$ limit, we establish a duality between Hubbard molecules with $4n$ and $4n+2$ sites, with $n$ integer. A molecule with $4n$ sites is an FMI in the absence of flux but becomes a band insulator in the presence of a half-quantum of flux, while a molecule with $4n+2$ sites is a band insulator in the absence of flux but becomes an FMI in the presence of a half-quantum of flux. Including next-nearest-neighbor-hoppings gives rise to new FMI states that belong to multidimensional irreducible representations of the molecular point group, giving rise to a rich phase diagram