Many-body localization transition in Rokhsar-Kivelson-type wave functions

Abstract

We construct a family of many-body wave functions to study the many-body localization phase transition. The wave functions have a Rokhsar-Kivelson form, in which the weight for the configurations are chosen from the Gibbs weights of a classical spin glass model, known as the random energy model, multiplied by a random sign structure to represent a highly excited state. These wave functions show a phase transition into an MBL phase. In addition, we see three regimes of entanglement scaling with the subsystem size: scaling with the entanglement corresponding to an infinite temperature thermal phase, constant scaling, and a subextensive scaling between these limits. Near the phase transition point, the fluctuations of the R\'enyi entropies are non-Gaussian. We find that R\'enyi entropies with different R\'enyi index transition into the MBL phase at different points and have different scaling behavior, suggesting a multifractal behavior.