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arXiv:2207.05360 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Entanglement dynamics and ergodicity breaking in a quantum cellular automaton

Kevissen Sellapillay, Alberto Verga, Giuseppe Di Molfetta

Published Sep 28, 2022• 11 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Ergodicity breaking is observed in the blockade regime of Rydberg atom arrays, in the form of low entanglement eigenstates known as scars, which fail to thermalize. The signature of these states persists in periodically driven systems, where they coexist with an extensive number of chaotic states. Here we investigate a quantum cellular automaton based on the classical rule that updates a site if its two neighbors are in the lower state. We show that the breaking of ergodicity extends to chaotic states. The dynamical breaking of ergodicity is controlled by chiral quasiparticle excitations which propagate entanglement. Evidence of nonlocal entanglement is found, showing that these nonthermal chaotic states may be useful to quantum computation.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.106.104309

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Ergodicity breaking is observed in the blockade regime of Rydberg atom arrays, in the form of low entanglement eigenstates known as scars, which fail to thermalize. The signature of these states persists in periodically driven systems, where they coexist with an extensive number of chaotic states. Here we investigate a quantum cellular automaton based on the classical rule that updates a site if its two neighbors are in the lower state. We show that the breaking of ergodicity extends to chaotic states. The dynamical breaking of ergodicity is controlled by chiral quasiparticle excitations which propagate entanglement. Evidence of nonlocal entanglement is found, showing that these nonthermal chaotic states may be useful to quantum computation.
Classical reversible cellular automata (CAs), which describe the discrete-time dynamics of classical degrees of freedom in a finite state space, can exhibit exact, nonthermal quantum eigenstates despite being classically chaotic. We show that every classical CA defines a family of generically nonintegrable, periodically driven (Floquet) quantum dynamics with exact, nonthermal eigenstates. These Floquet dynamics are nonergodic in the sense that certain product states on a periodic classical orbit fail to thermalize, while generic initial states thermalize as expected in a quantum chaotic system. We demonstrate that some signatures of these effects can be probed in quantum simulators based on Rydberg atoms in the blockade regime. These results establish classical CAs as parent models for a class of quantum chaotic systems with rare nonthermal eigenstates.
Scrambling is the delocalization of quantum information over a many-body system and underlies all quantum-chaotic dynamics. We employ discrete quantum cellular automata as classically simulable toy models of scrambling. We observe that these automata break ergodicity, i.e., they exhibit quantum scarring. We also find that the time scale of scrambling rises with the local Hilbert-space dimension and obeys a specific combinatorial pattern. We then show that scarring is mostly suppressed in a semiclassical limit, demonstrating that semiclassical-chaotic systems are more ergodic.
We study the quantum dynamics of Josephson-junction arrays. We find isolated groups of low-entanglement eigenstates that persist even when the Josephson interaction is strong enough to destroy the overall organization of the spectrum in multiplets, and a perturbative description is no longer possible. These eigenstates lie in the inner part of the spectrum, far from the spectral edge, and provide a weak ergodicity breaking, reminiscent of the quantum scars. Due to the presence of these eigenstates, initializing with a charge-density-wave state, the system does not thermalize and the charge-density-wave order persists for long times. Considering global ergodicity probes, we find that the system tends toward more ergodicity for increasing system size: The parameter range where the bulk of the eigenstates look nonergodic shrinks for increasing system size. We study two geometries, a one-dimensional chain and a two-leg ladder. In the latter case, adding a magnetic flux makes the system more ergodic.
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.
Generic quantum many-body systems are expected to thermalize, scrambling initial coherence while local observables relax to equilibrium values. Weak ergodicity breaking, often associated with quantum many-body scarring of homogeneous states, provides rare exceptions with long-lived coherence. We introduce a family of local spin-1/2 chains with a structured subspace that hosts a much broader range of nonthermal phenomena, such as scars, chirally propagating quasiparticles or approximate topological edge modes. These nonthermal phenomena happening at high energy densities can be understood via structured subspaces that are protected by destructive interference. We develop a quantitative leakage theory predicting which states retain coherence and suggest ways to improve the stability by inducing fast oscillations in the complement subspace. Our framework connects asymptotic scars, quantum cages, and parent-Hamiltonian constructions, and shows that weak ergodicity breaking in chaotic systems extends well beyond revivals of homogeneous initial states.
We study the spin-1 XY model on a hypercubic lattice in d dimensions and show that this well-known nonintegrable model hosts an extensive set of anomalous finite-energy-density eigenstates with remarkable properties. Namely, they exhibit subextensive entanglement entropy and spatiotemporal long-range order, both believed to be impossible in typical highly excited eigenstates of nonintegrable quantum many-body systems. While generic initial states are expected to thermalize, we show analytically that the eigenstates we construct lead to weak ergodicity breaking in the form of persistent oscillations of local observables following certain quantum quenches-in other words, these eigenstates provide an archetypal example of so-called quantum many-body scars. This Letter opens the door to the analytical study of the microscopic origin, dynamical signatures, and stability of such phenomena.