Many-Body-Localization Transition in the Strong Disorder Limit: Entanglement Entropy from the Statistics of Rare Extensive Resonances

The space of one-dimensional disordered interacting quantum models displaying a many-body localization (MBL) transition seems sufficiently rich to produce critical points with level statistics interpolating continuously between the Poisson statistics of the localized phase and the Wigner-Dyson statistics of the delocalized phase. In this paper, we consider the strong disorder limit of the MBL transition, where the level statistics at the MBL critical point is close to the Poisson statistics. We analyze a one-dimensional quantum spin model, in order to determine the statistical properties of the rare extensive resonances that are needed to destabilize the MBL phase. At criticality, we find that the entanglement entropy can grow with an exponent 0 < alpha < 1 anywhere between the area law alpha = 0 and the volume law alpha = 1, as a function of the resonances properties, while the entanglement spectrum follows the strong multifractality statistics. In the MBL phase near criticality, we obtain the simple value nu = 1 for the correlation length exponent. Independently of the strong disorder limit, we explain why, for the many-body localization transition concerning individual eigenstates, the correlation length exponent nu is not constrained by the usual Harris inequality nu >= 2/d, so that there is no theoretical inconsistency with the best numerical measure nu = 0.8 (3) obtained by Luitz et al. (2015).