Type: Article
Publication Date: 2016-10-10
Citations: 106
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.117.160601
The entanglement spectrum of the reduced density matrix contains information beyond the von Neumann entropy and provides unique insights into exotic orders or critical behavior of quantum systems. Here, we show that strongly disordered systems in the many-body localized phase have power-law entanglement spectra, arising from the presence of extensively many local integrals of motion. The power-law entanglement spectrum distinguishes many-body localized systems from ergodic systems, as well as from ground states of gapped integrable models or free systems in the vicinity of scale-invariant critical points. We confirm our results using large-scale exact diagonalization. In addition, we develop a matrix-product state algorithm which allows us to access the eigenstates of large systems close to the localization transition, and discuss general implications of our results for variational studies of highly excited eigenstates in many-body localized systems.