Many-body resonances in the avalanche instability of many-body localization

Abstract: Many-body localized (MBL) systems fail to reach thermal equilibrium under their own dynamics, even though they are interacting, nonintegrable, and in an extensively excited state. One instability towards thermalization of MBL systems is the so-called ``avalanche'', where a locally thermalizing rare region is able to spread thermalization through the full system. The spreading of the avalanche may be modeled and numerically studied in finite one-dimensional MBL systems by weakly coupling an infinite-temperature bath to one end of the system. We find that the avalanche spreads primarily via strong many-body resonances between rare near-resonant eigenstates of the closed system. Thus we find and explore a detailed connection between many-body resonances and avalanches in MBL systems.