Many-body localization with synthetic gauge fields in disordered Hubbard chains

Abstract: We analyze the localization properties of the disordered Hubbard model in the presence of a synthetic magnetic field. An analysis of level spacing ratio shows a clear transition from ergodic to many-body localized phase. The transition shifts to larger disorder strengths with increasing magnetic flux. Study of dynamics of local correlations and entanglement entropy indicates that charge excitations remain localized whereas spin degree of freedom gets delocalized in the presence of the synthetic flux. This residual ergodicity is enhanced by the presence of the magnetic field with dynamical observables suggesting incomplete localization at large disorder strengths. Furthermore, we examine the effect of quantum statistics on the local correlations and show that the long-time spin oscillations of a hard-core boson system are destroyed as opposed to the fermionic case.