Many-body localization in the droplet spectrum of the random XXZ quantum spin chain (Q1753392)

Anderson's concept of disorder-induced localization, in the single particle case, has received an ample coverage in the literature, both physical and mathematical. In particular, the mechanism responsible for the absence of diffusion in disordered media has been quantified in terms of random Schrödinger operators, where localization manifests itself as a pure particle spectrum, with eigenvectors exhibiting exponential spatial decay for almost all configurations of the (random) environment. For systems of many interacting particles, the structure and complexity of eigenstates of ``typical'' local Hamiltonians is one of central problems in the rigorous approach to the condesed matter physics. Specifically, while many manifestations of the single particle Anderson localization remain valid if one considers a fixed number of interacting particles, the underlying methodology is inadequate in the study of, e.g., the thermodynamic limit of an electron gas in a random environment. The problem of many-body-localization (MBL) is nowadays actively investigated and the XXZ-chain in a random field is a major model invoked in this context. The model is accessible to a rigorous analysis because the particle number is preserved in the case of a random field in the \(z\)-direction. For the Ising phase of this model, in the absence of an external field, the low energy states are known to be characterized by a droplet regime: spins form droplets, i.e., clusters of down spins in a ``sea'' of up spins. The droplet concept proves to be crucial in the present work. The proof is given that the XXZ chain in a random field exhibits one of expected hallmarks of localization, namely the exponential clustering of the averaged correlations of local eigenstates, with energies in the droplet spectrum. The proof works in the Ising phase for two distinct regimes: (i) random field with large disorder, (ii) strong Ising phase. The exponential clustering is found to persist under the time evolution in the droplet spectrum. Further dynamical manifestations of the localization spectrum like, e.g., non-spreading of information, zero velocity Lieb-Robinson bounds are presented in the sequel to the present work [the authors, Commun. Math. Phys. 361, No. 3, 1083--1113 (2018; Zbl 1414.82008)].