Instability of localization in translation-invariant systems

Abstract

The phenomenon of localization is usually accompanied with the presence of quenched disorder. To what extent disorder is necessary for localization is a well-known open problem. In this paper, we prove the instability of localization in translation-invariant systems. For any translation-invariant local Hamiltonian exhibiting either Anderson or many-body localization, an arbitrarily small translation-invariant random local perturbation almost surely leads to the following manifestations of delocalization: (i) Transport: For any (inhomogeneous) initial state, the spatial distribution of energy or any other local conserved quantity becomes uniform at late times. (ii) Scrambling: The out-of-time-ordered correlator of any traceless local operators decays to zero at late times. (iii) Thermalization: Random product states locally thermalize to the infinite temperature state with overwhelming probability.

v2 contains new results on the thermalization of random product states and a new author

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• Estimating time in quantum chaotic systems and black holes
• Convergence of eigenstate expectation values with system size