Many-body localization crossover is sharper in quasiperiodic spin chains

Abstract: Due to a phenomenon of many-body localization (MBL), the strong disorder may significantly slow down or even completely hinder the thermalization of quantum many-body systems. A sufficiently deep quasiperiodic potential may also inhibit thermalization. In this work, we numerically demonstrate direct differences in the behavior of standard ergodicity-breaking indicators at the MBL crossover in random and quasiperiodic systems. Our key finding is the exponential increase in the sharpness of the MBL crossover with system size for quasiperiodic systems, a trend that is only linear in disordered systems. The strong tendency towards a non-analytic behavior in quasiperiodic systems is consistent with the existence of dynamical regimes with sharply defined boundaries or an MBL phase transition. It highlights the importance of quasiperiodic systems for our understanding of many-body dynamics.