Intermediate spectral statistics in the many--body localization transition

Spectral statistics of systems that undergo many--body localization transition are studied. An analysis of the gap ratio statistics from the perspective of inter- and intra-sample randomness allows us to pin point differences between transitions in random and quasi-random disorder, showing the effects due to Griffiths rare events for the former case. It is argued that the transition for a random disorder exhibits universal features that are identified by constructing an appropriate model of intermediate spectral statistics which is a generalization of the family of short-range plasma models. The model incorporates the inter- and intra-sample fluctuations and faithfully reproduces level spacing distributions as well as number variance during the transition from ergodic to many--body localized phase. In particular, it grasps the critical level statistics which arise at disorder strength for which the fluctuations are the strongest.