Transport in Stark Many Body Localized Systems

Abstract

Using numerically exact methods we study transport in an interacting spin chain which for sufficiently strong spatially constant electric field is expected to experience Stark many-body localization. We show that starting from a generic initial state, a spin-excitation remains localized only up to a finite delocalization time, which depends exponentially on the size of the system and the strength of the electric field. This suggests that bona fide Stark many-body localization occurs only in the thermodynamic limit. We also demonstrate that the transient localization in a finite system and for electric fields stronger than the interaction strength can be well approximated by a Magnus expansion up-to times which grow with the electric field strength.