Catching thermal avalanches in the disordered XXZ model

We study the XXZ model with a random magnetic field in contact with a weakly disordered spin chain, acting as a finite thermal bath. We revise Fermi's golden rule description of the interaction between the thermal bath and the XXZ spin chain, contrasting it with a nonperturbative quantum avalanche scenario for the thermalization of the system. We employ two-point correlation functions to define the extent ξ_d of the thermalized region next to the bath. Unbounded growth of ξ_d proportional to the logarithm of time or faster is a signature of an avalanche. Such behavior signifies the thermalization of the system, as we confirm numerically for a generic initial state in the ergodic and critical regimes of the XXZ spin chain. In the many-body localized regime, a clear termination of avalanches is observed for specifically prepared initial states and, surprisingly, is not visible for generic initial product states. Additionally, we extract the localization length of the local integrals of motion and show that a bath made out of a weakly disordered XXZ chain has a similar effect on the system as a bath modeled by a Hamiltonian from a Gaussian orthogonal ensemble of random matrices. We also comment on the result of the earlier study (Phys. Rev. B 108, L020201 (2023)), arguing that the observed thermalization is due to external driving of the system and does not occur in the autonomous model. Our work reveals experimentally accessible signatures of quantum avalanches and identifies conditions under which termination of the avalanches may be observed.