Quantum many-body scarring is a recently discovered weak ergodicity-breaking phenomenon in quantum many-body systems. It was first seen in experiments with Rydberg atom array simulators, and characterized by nonthermalizing periodic revivals of certain initial-state configurations. Here, the authors extend our understanding of the physical origins of this phenomenon by showing through an explicit construction that scars can arise through the presence of entangled virtual degrees of freedom undergoing periodic dynamics. This demonstrates a novel analytic scenario, whereby intrinsically entangled states can exhibit periodic revivals in an otherwise chaotic many-body system, enriching the phenomenology of quantum many-body scarring.
Quantum many-body scarring is a recently discovered weak ergodicity-breaking phenomenon in quantum many-body systems. It was first seen in experiments with Rydberg atom array simulators, and characterized by nonthermalizing periodic revivals of certain initial-state configurations. Here, the authors extend our understanding of the physical origins of this phenomenon by showing through an explicit construction that scars can arise through the presence of entangled virtual degrees of freedom undergoing periodic dynamics. This demonstrates a novel analytic scenario, whereby intrinsically entangled states can exhibit periodic revivals in an otherwise chaotic many-body system, enriching the phenomenology of quantum many-body scarring.
Recently, much effort has focused on understanding weak ergodicity breaking in many-body quantum systems that could lead to wavefunction revivals in their dynamics far from equilibrium. An example of such nonthermalizing behavior is the phenomenon of quantum many-body scars, which has been experimentally observed in Rydberg-atom quantum simulators. Here, the authors show that many-body scars can generally be viewed as forming approximate subspaces of ``broken'' Lie algebra representations. Furthermore, they use an iterative process to identify perturbations which ``correct'' the broken Lie algebra, resulting in improved quantum revivals from special initial states. The description of embedded Lie algebra representations unifies several theoretical models, which feature exact many-body scars, with experimentally realized models, such as the constrained Rydberg-atom system, where scars only form an approximate Lie algebra representation.
The recent discovery of persistent revivals in the Rydberg-atom quantum simulator has revealed a weakly ergodicity-breaking mechanism dubbed quantum many-body scars, which are a set of nonthermal states embedded in otherwise thermal spectra. Until now, such a mechanism has been mainly studied in Hermitian systems. Here, we establish the non-Hermitian quantum many-body scars and systematically characterize their nature from dynamic revivals, entanglement entropy, physical observables, and energy level statistics. Notably, we find the non-Hermitian quantum many-body scars exhibit significantly enhanced coherent revival dynamics when approaching the exceptional point. The signatures of non-Hermitian scars switch from the real-energy axis to the imaginary-energy axis after a real-to-complex spectrum transition driven by increasing non-Hermiticity, where an exceptional point and a quantum tricritical point emerge simultaneously. We further examine the stability of non-Hermitian quantum many-body scars against external fields, reveal the non-Hermitian quantum criticality and eventually set up the whole phase diagram. The possible connection to the open quantum many-body systems is also explored. Our findings offer insights for realizing long-lived coherent states in non-Hermitian many-body systems.
The recent discovery of persistent revivals in the Rydberg-atom quantum simulator has revealed a weakly ergodicity-breaking mechanism dubbed quantum many-body scars, which are a set of nonthermal states embedded in otherwise thermal spectra. Until now, such a mechanism has been mainly studied in Hermitian systems. Here, we establish the non-Hermitian quantum many-body scars and systematically characterize their nature from dynamic revivals, entanglement entropy, physical observables, and energy level statistics. Notably, we find the non-Hermitian quantum many-body scars exhibit significantly enhanced coherent revival dynamics when approaching the exceptional point. The signatures of non-Hermitian scars switch from the real-energy axis to the imaginary-energy axis after a real-to-complex spectrum transition driven by increasing non-Hermiticity, where an exceptional point and a quantum tricritical point emerge simultaneously. We further examine the stability of non-Hermitian quantum many-body scars against external fields, reveal the non-Hermitian quantum criticality and eventually set up the whole phase diagram. The possible connection to the open quantum many-body systems is also explored. Our findings offer insights for realizing long-lived coherent states in non-Hermitian many-body systems.
The success of statistical mechanics in describing complex quantum systems rests upon typicality properties such as ergodicity. Both integrable systems and the recently discovered many-body localisation show that these assumptions can be strongly violated in either finely tuned cases, or in the presence of quenched disorder. In this thesis, we uncover a qualitatively different form of ergodicity breaking, wherein a small number of atypical eigenstates are embedded throughout an otherwise thermalising spectrum. We call this a many-body quantum scar, in analogy to quantum scars in single-particle quantum chaos, where quantum scarred eigenfunctions concentrate around associated periodic classical trajectories. \nWe demonstrate that many-body quantum scars can be found in an unusual model recently realised in a 51 Rydberg atom quantum simulator. The observed coherent oscillations following in a certain quench experiment are a consequence of the quantum scar. At the same time, the level statistics rules out conventional explanations such as integrability and many-body localisation. We develop an approximate method to construct scarred eigenstates, in order to describe their structure and physical properties. Additionally, we find a local perturbation which makes these non-equilibrium properties much more pronounced, with near perfect quantum revivals. At the same time the other eigenstates remain thermal. Our results suggest that many-body quantum scars forms a new class of quantum dynamics with unusual properties, which are realisable in current experiments.
Strongly interacting systems with quantum many-body scars exhibit persistent fidelity oscillations when prepared in a certain class of initial states, but otherwise undergo ergodic dynamics. Previous examples of scars have interpreted the characteristic periodic dynamics in terms of the precession of a macroscopic SU(2) spin in an effective magnetic field. Here, the authors uncover a new exactly solvable example of many-body scars in a spin-\textonehalf{} model and show that the scarred dynamics in this model evades such an interpretation. This unusual coherent dynamics arises due to an emergent kinetic constraint that endows the time-evolving many-body state with constant area-law entanglement. The model studied in this work is relevant to experiments on Rydberg-atom quantum simulators in the antiblockade regime.
The observations of persistent revivals in the Rydberg atom chain have revealed a weak ergodicity breaking mechanism known as quantum many-body scars, which is typically a collection of states with low entanglement embedded in otherwise thermal spectra. Here, by applying a generic formalism, we reveal a direct evolution from the quantum many-body scars to the multiple inverted quantum many-body scars, i.e., different sets of excited states with volume-law entanglement entropy embedded in a sea of states with area-law entanglement. When increasing the disorder strength, a series of exact eigenstates, acting as conventional quantum many-body scars in a regime of weak disorder, remain unchanged. Around each of these states, the inverted quantum many-body scars are introduced by the increased disorder. Moreover, the strong disorder also gives rise to additional sets of inverted quantum many-body scars with their energies concentrating in the middle of the exact eigenstates. As a result, all the multiple inverted quantum many-body scars are approximately equidistant in energy, reminiscent of conventional quantum many-body scarred states. Despite being the measure-zero states in the whole spectrum, these inverted quantum many-body scarred states significantly influence nonequilibrium dynamics in the large disorder regime. Random thermal states in a specific subspace show periodic revivals in the fidelity dynamics, while the typical charge-density-wave states exhibit persistent imbalance dynamics. We further examine the stability of the conventional and the inverted quantum many-body scars against the external random field. Our findings expand the variety of nonthermal systems and draw a connection between the weak violation of ergodicity and that of nonergodicity.