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arXiv:1910.09526 · Communications Physics

Quantum scars of bosons with correlated hopping

Ana Hudomal, Ivana Vasić, Nicolas Regnault, Zlatko Papić

Published Jun 1, 2020• 98 citations
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Abstract

Abstract Recent experiments on Rydberg atom arrays have found evidence of anomalously slow thermalization and persistent density oscillations, which have been interpreted as a many-body analog of the phenomenon of quantum scars. Periodic dynamics and atypical scarred eigenstates originate from a “hard” kinetic constraint: the neighboring Rydberg atoms cannot be simultaneously excited. Here we propose a realization of quantum many-body scars in a 1D bosonic lattice model with a “soft” constraint in the form of density-assisted hopping. We discuss the relation of this model to the standard Bose-Hubbard model and possible experimental realizations using ultracold atoms. We find that this model exhibits similar phenomenology to the Rydberg atom chain, including weakly entangled eigenstates at high energy densities and the presence of a large number of exact zero energy states, with distinct algebraic structure.

DOI
10.1038/s42005-020-0364-9

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Abstract Recent experiments on Rydberg atom arrays have found evidence of anomalously slow thermalization and persistent density oscillations, which have been interpreted as a many-body analog of the phenomenon of quantum scars. Periodic dynamics and atypical scarred eigenstates originate from a “hard” kinetic constraint: the neighboring Rydberg atoms cannot be simultaneously excited. Here we propose a realization of quantum many-body scars in a 1D bosonic lattice model with a “soft” constraint in the form of density-assisted hopping. We discuss the relation of this model to the standard Bose-Hubbard model and possible experimental realizations using ultracold atoms. We find that this model exhibits similar phenomenology to the Rydberg atom chain, including weakly entangled eigenstates at high energy densities and the presence of a large number of exact zero energy states, with distinct algebraic structure.
The concept of quantum many-body scars has recently been put forward as a route to describe weak ergodicity breaking and violation of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. We propose a simple setup to generate quantum many-body scars in a doubly modulated Bose-Hubbard system which can be readily implemented in cold atomic gases. The dynamics are shown to be governed by kinetic constraints which appear via density-assisted tunneling in a high-frequency expansion. We find the optimal driving parameters for the kinetically constrained hopping which leads to small isolated subspaces of scared eigenstates. The experimental signatures and the transition to fully thermalizing behavior as a function of driving frequency are analyzed.
Persistent revivals recently observed in Rydberg atom simulators have challenged our understanding of thermalization and attracted much interest to the concept of quantum many-body scars (QMBSs). QMBSs are non-thermal highly excited eigenstates that coexist with typical eigenstates in the spectrum of many-body Hamiltonians, and have since been reported in multiple theoretical models, including the so-called PXP model, approximately realized by Rydberg simulators. At the same time, questions of how common QMBSs are and in what models they are physically realized remain open. In this Letter, we demonstrate that QMBSs exist in a broader family of models that includes and generalizes PXP to longer-range constraints and states with different periodicity. We show that in each model, multiple QMBS families can be found. Each of them relies on a different approximate su(2) algebra, leading to oscillatory dynamics in all cases. However, in contrast to the PXP model, their observation requires launching dynamics from weakly entangled initial states rather than from a product state. QMBSs reported here may be experimentally probed using Rydberg atom simulator in the regime of longer-range Rydberg blockades.
Motivated by recent observations of ergodicity breaking due to Hilbert space fragmentation in 1D Fermi-Hubbard chains with a tilted potential [Scherg et al., arXiv:2010.12965], we show that the same system also hosts quantum many-body scars in a regime U≈Δ≫J at electronic filling factor ν=1. We numerically demonstrate that the scarring phenomenology in this model is similar to other known realizations such as Rydberg atom chains, including persistent dynamical revivals and ergodicity-breaking many-body eigenstates. At the same time, we show that the mechanism of scarring in the Fermi-Hubbard model is different from other examples in the literature: the scars originate from a subgraph, representing a free spin-1 paramagnet, which is weakly connected to the rest of the Hamiltonian's adjacency graph. Our work demonstrates that correlated fermions in tilted optical lattices provide a platform for understanding the interplay of many-body scarring and other forms of ergodicity breaking, such as localization and Hilbert space fragmentation.
Quantum many-body scars are nonthermal states exhibiting persistent revivals in an otherwise ergodic, nonintegrable quantum system. Here we leverage the phenomenon of kinetic frustration -- the destructive interference of multiple quantum paths -- to create exact scars. The simplicity makes these models directly suitable for implementation on multiple existing quantum simulation platforms. In particular, we show how frustrated hardcore bosons in cold atom Bose-Hubbard simulators and polar molecule or Rydberg atom tweezer arrays have persistent oscillations whose lifetimes can be tuned with experimentally accessible parameters, like the Hubbard interaction or a Floquet drive. Second, we propose an experimentally realizable scar within a non-integrable Fermi-Hubbard model where the frustration arises from the fermionic exchange statistics, which admits a one-to-one mapping with the bosonic model in the scar subspace. Finally, we introduce a practical heuristic based on the energy distribution of eigenstates for systematically predicting and optimizing quantum many-body scar lifetimes. Their cross-platform realizability and long lifetimes make them well-suited for benchmarking coherence and exploring nonergodic dynamics in current and near-term quantum devices.
We introduce a class of spinless fermion models that exhibit quantum many-body scars (QMBS) originating from kinetic constraints in the form of density-assisted hopping. The models can be defined on any lattice in any dimension and allow for spatially varying interactions. We construct a tower of exact eigenstates with finite energy density, and we demonstrate that these QMBS are responsible for the nonthermal nature of the system by studying the entanglement entropy and correlation functions. The quench dynamics from certain initial states is also investigated, and it is confirmed that the QMBS induce nonthermalizing dynamics. As another characterization of the QMBS, we give a parent Hamiltonian for which the QMBS are unique ground states. We also prove the uniqueness rigorously.
A recent experiment in the Rydberg atom chain observed unusual oscillatory quench dynamics with a charge density wave initial state, and theoretical works identified a set of many-body "scar states" showing nonthermal behavior in the Hamiltonian as potentially responsible for the atypical dynamics. In the same nonintegrable Hamiltonian, we discover several eigenstates at an infinite temperature that can be represented exactly as matrix product states with a finite bond dimension, for both periodic boundary conditions (two exact E=0 states) and open boundary conditions (two E=0 states and one each E=±sqrt[2]). This discovery explicitly demonstrates the violation of the strong eigenstate thermalization hypothesis in this model and uncovers exact quantum many-body scar states. These states show signatures of translational symmetry breaking with a period-2 bond-centered pattern, despite being in one dimension at an infinite temperature. We show that the nearby many-body scar states can be well approximated as "quasiparticle excitations" on top of our exact E=0 scar states and propose a quasiparticle explanation of the strong oscillations observed in experiments.