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arXiv:1910.11350 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Quantum many-body scar states with emergent kinetic constraints and finite-entanglement revivals

Thomas Iadecola, Michael Schecter

Published Jan 29, 2020• 178 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.101.024306

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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.
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 scars have been put forward as counterexamples to the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. These atypical states are observed in a range of correlated models as long-lived oscillations of local observables in quench experiments starting from selected initial states. The long-time memory is a manifestation of quantum nonergodicity generally linked to a subextensive generation of entanglement entropy, the latter of which is widely used as a diagnostic for identifying quantum many-body scars numerically as low entanglement outliers. Here we show that by adding kinetic constraints to a fractionalized orthogonal metal, we can construct a minimal model with orthogonal quantum many-body scars leading to persistent oscillations with infinite lifetime coexisting with rapid volume-law entanglement generation. Our example provides new insights into the link between quantum ergodicity and many-body entanglement while opening new avenues for exotic nonequilibrium dynamics in strongly correlated multicomponent quantum systems.
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.
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.
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.
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.