Many-body localization in generalized Kondo lattice with disorder

¹ School of Physics, Beijing Institute of Technology - Beijing 100081, China
² Department of Physics, Renmin University of China - Beijing 100872, China
³ Beijing Key Laboratory of Opto- electronic Functional Materials and Micro-nano Devices, Renmin University of China - Beijing 100872, China

^(a) 6120170047@bit.edu.cn
^(b) wzhangl@ruc.edu.cn

Received: 10 December 2019
Accepted: 29 January 2020

Abstract

We study the many-body localization transition in a one-dimensional generalized Kondo lattice, where a one-dimensional Hubbard chain with disordered spin-orbit coupling interacts with a fixed impurity of spin . Using exact diagonalization, we characterize the many-body localized transition with entanglement entropy and energy spectrum distribution. We find that although the subsystem of the impurity is free of disorder, it can still be localized in the spin space by the coupling with the Hubbard chain. We also investigate the out-of-time-order correlation in the many-body localized phase, and find distinctive features in comparison to either the thermal state or the Anderson localized state. Our scheme can be realized in experiments with ultracold fermions of alkaline-earth–like atoms near an orbital Feshbach resonance.