Dephasing catastrophe in $4 - \epsilon$ dimensions: A possible instability of the ergodic (many-body-delocalized) phase

Abstract

In two dimensions (2D), dephasing by a bath cuts off Anderson localization that would otherwise occur at any energy density for fermions with disorder. For an isolated system with short-range interactions, the system can be its own bath, exhibiting diffusive (non-Markovian) thermal density fluctuations. We recast the dephasing of weak localization due to a diffusive bath as a self-interacting polymer loop. We investigate the critical behavior of the loop in $d=4-\epsilon$ dimensions, and find a nontrivial fixed point corresponding to a temperature $T^* \sim \epsilon >0$ where the dephasing time diverges. Assuming that this fixed point survives to $\epsilon=2$, we associate it to a possible instability of the ergodic phase. Our approach may open a new line of attack against the problem of the ergodic to many-body-localized phase transition in $d > 1$ spatial dimensions.