Spin-charge separation and many-body localization

Abstract

We study many-body localization for a disordered chain of spin 1/2 fermions. In [Phys. Rev. B \textbf{94}, 241104 (2016)], when both down and up components are exposed to the same strong disorder, the authors observe a power law growth of the entanglement entropy that suggests that many-body localization is not complete; the density (charge) degree of freedom is localized, while the spin degree of freedom is apparently delocalized. We show that this power-like behavior is only a transient effect and that, for longer times, the growth is logarithmic in time suggesting that the spin degree of freedom is also localized, so that the system follows the standard many-body localization scenario. We also study the experimentally relevant case of quasiperiodic disorder.