Finding matrix product state representations of highly-excited eigenstates of many-body localized Hamiltonians

Abstract: A key property of many-body localization, the localization of quantum particles in systems with both quenched disorder and interactions, is the area law entanglement of even highly excited eigenstates of many-body localized Hamiltonians. Matrix Product States (MPS) can be used to efficiently represent low entanglement (area law) wave functions in one dimension. An important application of MPS is the widely used Density Matrix Renormalization Group (DMRG) algorithm for finding ground states of one dimensional Hamiltonians. Here, we describe two algorithms, the Shift and Invert MPS (SIMPS) and excited state DMRG which finds highly-excited eigenstates of many-body localized Hamiltonians. Excited state DMRG uses a modified sweeping procedure to identify eigenstates whereas SIMPS is a shift-inverse procedure that applies the inverse of the shifted Hamiltonian to a MPS multiple times to project out the targeted eigenstate. To demonstrate the power of these methods we verify the breakdown of the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH) in the many-body localized phase of the random field Heisenberg model, show the saturation of entanglement in the MBL phase and generate local excitations.