Quantum quenches, thermalization, and many-body localization

We conjecture that thermalization following a quantum quench in a strongly correlated quantum system is closely connected to many-body delocalization in the space of quasi-particles. This scenario is tested in the anisotropic Heisenberg spin chain with different types of integrability-breaking terms. We first quantify the deviations from integrability by analyzing the level spacing statistics and the inverse participation ratio of the system's eigenstates. We then focus on thermalization, by studying the dynamics after a sudden quench of the anisotropy parameter. Our numerical simulations clearly support the conjecture, as long as the integrability-breaking term acts homogeneously on the quasiparticle space, in such a way as to induce ergodicity over all the relevant Hilbert space.