Robustness of quantum many-body scars in the presence of a Markovian bath
Xiang-Ping Jiang, Mingdi Xu, Xuanpu Yang +3 more
Abstract Generic closed quantum many-body systems tend to thermalize, a phenomenon known as quantum ergodicity, where initial local information scrambles into the full space. A paradigmatic exception is many-body localization (MBL), where disorder prevents thermalization and breaks ergodicity strongly. While environmental dissipation is generally expected to delocalize such systems, this consequence has recently been challenged. Here we show that local dissipative operators can instead stabilize weak ergodicity breaking in systems with quantum many-body scars (QMBS). These operators drive the system into steady states dominated by scarred eigenstates. Furthermore, we show that this tailored dissipation induces robust dynamic revivals, even in the presence of local dephasing noise. We propose an experimental realization using a cold atomic setup. Our findings make ergodicity-breaking signatures directly observable in dissipative dynamics and open avenues for preparing long-lived QMBS states with coherent dynamics.
Communications Physics•Dec 6, 2025•6 citations