We characterize the information dynamics of strongly disordered systems using a combination of analytics, exact diagonalization, and matrix product operator (MPO) simulations. More specifically, we study the spreading of quantum information in three different scenarios: thermalizing, Anderson localized, and many-body localized. We qualitatively distinguish these cases by quantifying the amount of remnant information in a local region. The nature of the dynamics is further explored by computing the propagation of mutual information with respect to varying partitions. Finally, we demonstrate that classical simulability, as captured by the magnitude of MPO truncation errors, exhibits enhanced fluctuations near the localization transition, suggesting the possibility of its use as a diagnostic of the critical point.

• Received 24 July 2017
• Revised 18 October 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.96.174201