Localization-delocalization transition in many-body quantum systems with correlated disorder

The presence of frozen uncorrelated random on-site potential in interacting quantum systems can induce a transition from an ergodic phase to a localized one, the so-called many-body localization. Here we numerically study the effects of auto-correlated disorder on the static and dynamical properties of a one-dimensional many-body quantum system which exhibits many-body localization. Specifically, by means of some standard measures of energy level repulsion and localization of energy eigenstates, we show that a strong degree of correlations between the on-site potentials in the one-dimensional spin-1/2 Heisenberg model leads to suppression of the many-body localization phase, while level repulsion is mitigated for small disorder strengths, although energy eigenstates remain well extended. Our findings are also remarkably manifested in time domain, on which we put main emphasis, as shown by the time evolution of experimentally relevant observables, like the return probability and the spin auto-correlation function.