Level statistics across the many--body localization transition

Abstract

Level statistics of systems that undergo many--body localization transition are studied. An analysis of the gap ratio statistics from the perspective of inter- and intra-sample randomness allows us to pin point differences between transitions in random and quasi-random disorder, showing the effects due to Griffiths rare events for the former case. It is argued that the transition in the case of random disorder exhibits universal features that are identified by constructing an appropriate model of intermediate spectral statistics which is a generalization of the family of short-range plasma models. The considered weighted short-range plasma model yields a very good agreement both for level spacing distribution including its exponential tail and the number variance up to tens of level spacings outperforming previously proposed models. In particular, our model grasps the critical level statistics which arise at disorder strength for which the inter-sample fluctuations are the strongest. Going beyond the paradigmatic examples of many-body localization in spin systems, we show that the considered model also grasps the level statistics of disordered Bose- and Fermi-Hubbard models. The remaining deviations for long-range spectral correlations are discussed and attributed mainly to the intricacies of level unfolding.Comment: 19pp. enlarged by including 1807.06983; version accepted in Phys. Rev.