Typicality approach to the optical conductivity in thermal and many-body localized phases

Abstract

We study the frequency dependence of the optical conductivity $\text{Re} \, \sigma(\omega)$ of the Heisenberg spin-$1/2$ chain in the thermal and near the transition to the many-body localized phase induced by the strength of a random $z$-directed magnetic field. Using the method of dynamical quantum typicality, we calculate the real-time dynamics of the spin-current autocorrelation function and obtain the Fourier transform $\text{Re} \, \sigma(\omega)$ for system sizes much larger than accessible to standard exact-diagonalization approaches. We find that the low-frequency behavior of $\text{Re} \, \sigma(\omega)$ is well described by $\text{Re} \, \sigma(\omega) \approx \sigma_\text{dc} + a \, |\omega|^\alpha$, with $\alpha \approx 1$ in a wide range within the thermal phase and close to the transition. We particularly detail the decrease of $\sigma_\text{dc}$ in the thermal phase as a function of increasing disorder for strong exchange anisotropies. We further find that the temperature dependence of $\sigma_\text{dc}$ is consistent with the existence of a mobility edge.