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arXiv:2403.05515 · Physical Review Letters

Volume-Entangled Exact Scar States in the PXP and Related Models in Any Dimension

Andrew N. Ivanov, Olexei I. Motrunich

Published Feb 4, 2025• 16 citations
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Abstract

In this Letter, we report first exact volume-entangled Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-type scar states hosted by PXP and related Hamiltonians corresponding to various geometric configurations of Rydberg-blockaded atom systems, including the most extensively studied ones such as the chain with periodic boundary conditions (PBCs) and square lattice. We start by introducing a new zero-energy eigenstate of the PBC chain and proceed by generalizing it to a wide variety of geometries and Hamiltonians. We point out the potential experimental relevance of our states by providing a protocol for their preparation on near-term Rydberg quantum devices, which relies only on strictly local measurements and evolution under native Hamiltonians. We also demonstrate the utility of these states for the study of quantum dynamics by describing a protocol for measuring infinite-temperature out-of-time-order correlator functions.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.134.050403

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In this Letter, we report first exact volume-entangled Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-type scar states hosted by PXP and related Hamiltonians corresponding to various geometric configurations of Rydberg-blockaded atom systems, including the most extensively studied ones such as the chain with periodic boundary conditions (PBCs) and square lattice. We start by introducing a new zero-energy eigenstate of the PBC chain and proceed by generalizing it to a wide variety of geometries and Hamiltonians. We point out the potential experimental relevance of our states by providing a protocol for their preparation on near-term Rydberg quantum devices, which relies only on strictly local measurements and evolution under native Hamiltonians. We also demonstrate the utility of these states for the study of quantum dynamics by describing a protocol for measuring infinite-temperature out-of-time-order correlator functions.
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.
Exact solutions for excited states in nonintegrable quantum Hamiltonians have revealed novel dynamical phenomena that can occur in quantum many-body systems. This work proposes a method to analytically construct a specific set of volume-law entangled zero-energy exact excited eigenstates in a large class of spin Hamiltonians. In particular, we show that all spin chains that satisfy a simple set of conditions host exact volume law entangled zero-energy eigenstates in the middle of their spectra. Examples of physically relevant spin chains of this type include the transverse-field Ising model, PXP model, spin-S XY model, and spin-S Kitaev chain. Although these eigenstates are highly atypical in their structure, they are thermal with respect to local observables. Our framework also unifies many recent constructions of volume-law entangled eigenstates in the literature. Finally, we show that a similar construction also generalizes to spin models on graphs in arbitrary dimensions.
In this work, we present new, highly non-trivial area-law exact zero-energy eigenstates of the one-dimensional (1D) PXP and related models. We formulate sufficient conditions for a matrix product state to represent an exact zero-energy eigenstate of a given 1D kinetically constrained model and use them to prove our new states. We also demonstrate that all previously known exact eigenstates of PXP-type models satisfy these conditions, and, in fact, can be directly deduced from them. We discuss and demonstrate a remarkably effective general numerical technique for discovering finite-bond-dimension eigenstates residing in degenerate subspaces of a broad class of Hamiltonians. Our results highlight a previously unrecognized structure characteristic of the exponentially large nullspaces in kinetically constrained models, suggesting the possibly of extensively many increasingly complex area-law zero-energy eigenstates in the thermodynamic limit. The important implications of these emergent exact eigenstates for the general thermalization phenomenology are exemplified by one of the states introduced in this work, which we propose is a member of the primary Z2\mathbb{Z}_2Z2​ quantum many-body scar tower responsible for long-lived revivals in the Rydberg atom chain experiment.
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.
We study the nature of the ergodicity-breaking ``quantum many-body scar'' states that appear in the PXP model describing constrained Rabi oscillations. For a wide class of bipartite lattices of Rydberg atoms, we reveal that the nearly energy-equidistant tower of these states arises from the Hamiltonian's close proximity to a generalized projector-embedding form in Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 030601 (2017), a structure common to many models hosting quantum many-body scars. We construct a non-Hermitian but strictly local extension of the PXP model hosting exact quantum scars and show how various Hermitian scar-stabilizing extensions from the literature can be naturally understood within this framework. The exact scar states are obtained analytically as large spin states of explicitly constructed pseudospins. The quasiperiodic motion ensuing from the N\'eel state is finally shown to be the projection onto the Rydberg-constrained subspace of the precession of the large pseudospin.
Kinetically constrained systems, such as those representing Rydberg atom arrays in the blockade regime, have gathered considerable attention due to the presence of atypical eigenstates in their spectrum. The latter manifests itself through the presence of quantum many-body scars as well as unusually large zero-mode (ZM) subspaces which contain analytically tractable eigenstates with various entanglement scalings. In particular, some of the latter are excitable zero-modes (EZMs), meaning that they can be promoted to a non-zero energy for open boundary conditions. In this work, I present an efficient protocol for finding analytical expressions for translation-invariant EZMs in constrained systems, based on the eigendecomposition of the local unconstrained Hamiltonian. I demonstrate the power of this method on a decorated Rydberg chain. In that model, my protocol directly produces a continuous matrix-product-state manifold located entirely in the zero-energy eigenspace for periodic boundary conditions. The span of that manifold grows exponentially with the system, and for odd system sizes it covers the entire zero-momentum eigenspace with zero energy. I then show how the physical structure of the manifold, which is tied to the local eigenbasis, also allows one to derive analytical expressions for ZMs at non-zero momentum and for a polynomial number of exact scars at E=±3E=\pm\sqrt{3}E=±3​.