Many body localization transition with correlated disorder

Abstract

We address the critical properties of the many-body localization (MBL) phase transition in one-dimensional systems subject to spatially correlated disorder. We consider a general family of disorder models, parameterized by how strong the fluctuations of the disordered couplings are when coarse-grained over a region of size $\ell$. For uncorrelated randomness, the characteristic scale for these fluctuations is $\sqrt{\ell}$; more generally they scale as $\ell^\gamma$. We discuss both positively correlated disorder ($1/2 < \gamma < 1$) and anticorrelated, or "hyperuniform," disorder ($\gamma < 1/2$). We argue that anticorrelations in the disorder are generally irrelevant at the MBL transition. Moreover, assuming the MBL transition is described by the recently developed renormalization-group scheme of Morningstar \emph{et al.} [Phys. Rev. B 102, 125134, (2020)], we argue that even positively correlated disorder leaves the critical theory unchanged, although it modifies certain properties of the many-body localized phase.