Weak ergodicity breaking, particularly through quantum many-body scars (QMBS), has become a significant focus in many-body physics. Krylov state complexity quantifies the spread of quantum states within the Krylov basis and serves as a powerful diagnostic for analyzing nonergodic dynamics. In this work, we study spin-one XXZ magnets and reveal nonergodic behavior tied to QMBS. For the XY model, the nematic N\'eel state exhibits periodic revivals in Krylov complexity. In the generic XXZ model, we identify spin helix states as weakly ergodicity-breaking states, characterized by low entanglement and nonthermal dynamics. Across different scenarios, the Lanczos coefficients for scarred states display an elliptical pattern, reflecting a hidden SU(2) algebra that enables analytical results for Krylov complexity and fidelity. These findings, which exemplify the rare capability to characterize QMBS analytically, are feasible with current experimental techniques and offer deep insights into the nonergodic dynamics of interacting quantum systems.
Weak ergodicity breaking, particularly through quantum many-body scars (QMBS), has become a significant focus in many-body physics. Krylov state complexity quantifies the spread of quantum states within the Krylov basis and serves as a powerful diagnostic for analyzing nonergodic dynamics. In this work, we study spin-one XXZ magnets and reveal nonergodic behavior tied to QMBS. For the XY model, the nematic N'eel state exhibits periodic revivals in Krylov complexity. In the generic XXZ model, we identify spin helix states as weakly ergodicity-breaking states, characterized by low entanglement and nonthermal dynamics. Across different scenarios, the Lanczos coefficients for scarred states display an elliptical pattern, reflecting a hidden SU(2) algebra that enables analytical results for Krylov complexity and fidelity. These findings, which exemplify the rare capability to characterize QMBS analytically, are feasible with current experimental techniques and offer deep insights into the nonergodic dynamics of interacting quantum systems.
Scar states are special many-body eigenstates that weakly violate the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH). Using the explicit formalism of the Lanczos algorithm, usually known as the forward scattering approximation in this context, we compute the Krylov state (spread) complexity of typical states generated by the time evolution of the PXP Hamiltonian, hosting such states. We show that the complexity for the N\'eel state revives in an approximate sense, while complexity for the generic ETH-obeying state always increases. This can be attributed to the approximate SU(2) structure of the corresponding generators of the Hamiltonian. We quantify such ``closeness'' by the q-deformed SU(2) algebra and provide an analytic expression of Lanczos coefficients for the N\'eel state within the approximate Krylov subspace. We intuitively explain the results in terms of a tight-binding model. We further consider a deformation of the PXP Hamiltonian and compute the corresponding Lanczos coefficients and the complexity. We find that complexity for the N\'eel state shows nearly perfect revival while the same does not hold for a generic ETH-obeying state.
Additional quantum many-body scars of the spin-1XY model with Fock-space cages and commutant algebras
Quantum many-body scars (QMBS) represent a mechanism for weak ergodicity breaking, characterized by the coexistence of atypical non-thermal eigenstates within an otherwise thermalizing many-body spectrum. In this work, we revisit the spin-1XY model on a periodic chain and construct several new families of exact scar eigenstates embedded within its extensively degenerate manifolds that owe their origins to an interplay of U(1) magnetization conservation and chiral symmetries. We go beyond previously studied towers of states and first identify a novel set of interference-protected eigenstates resembling Fock space cage states, where destructive interference confines the wave function to sparse subgraphs of the Fock space. These states exhibit subextensive entanglement entropy, and when subjected to a transverse magnetic field, form equally spaced ladders whose coherent superpositions display long-lived fidelity oscillations. We further reveal a simpler organizing principle behind these nonthermal states by using the commutant algebra framework, in particular by showing that they are simultaneous eigenstates of non-commuting local operators. Moreover, in doing so, we uncover two more novel families of exact scars: a tower of volume-entangled states, and a set of mirror-dimer states with some free local degrees of freedom. Our results illustrate the power and interplay of interference-based and algebraic mechanisms of non-ergodicity, offering systematic routes to identifying and classifying QMBS in generic many-body quantum systems.
Anyons obey fractional statistics that lie between bosonic and fermionic statistics, giving rise to a broad range of intriguing phenomena. However, how anyonic statistics govern quantum-state complexity is still largely unexplored. In this work, we investigate the interplay between the statistical phase and on-site interactions in the anyon-Hubbard model, identifying exact quantum many-body scar eigenstates and novel quench dynamics. The Krylov complexity exhibits perfect periodic revivals independent of the statistical phase in the scarred dynamics, whereas after a quench it depends on both the statistical phase and the interaction strength. In the strong-interaction regime, we find approximate scarred dynamics, while in the weak-interaction regime the state spreads over Krylov space and the complexity ultimately saturates. Moreover, for the bosonic initial state, the complexity of fermions exhibits the lowest saturation value, and vice versa. For fractional statistics, the saturation plateau is minimized when the post-quench statistical phase is close to that of the initial state. Our results demonstrate the central role of the statistical phase in governing many-body dynamics and provide new insights into Krylov complexity and quantum many-body scars.
This thesis investigates the anomalous dynamics observed in a Rydberg atom experiment in the broadest sense: a strongly interacting spin chain, without integrability or disorder, exhibits coherent many-body revivals ensuing only from specific initial states. This non-thermal behavior is attributed to the presence of quantum many-body scars (QMBS), a novel class of ergodicity breaking phenomena. Unlike other non-thermalizing systems such as integrable models and many-body localization, the mechanism of ergodicity breaking in QMBS is quite subtle, relying on a (vanishingly) small subset of anomalous eigenstates, known as scar states: one could observe ergodicity breaking only if initial states have appreciable overlap with these scar states. In other words, systems hosting QMBS are indistinguishable from typical chaotic, thermalizing systems, except for scar states. While the theoretical understanding of QMBS has advanced through the investigation of various toy quantum models, ranging from the Affleck-Kennedy-Lieb-Tasaki (AKLT) model to the Hubbard model, these insights do not fully resolve the mysterious oscillations in the Rydberg experiment: crucially the wavefunction corresponding to the experiment, and its relation to many other toy models in the literature remain open questions. Furthermore, beyond mathematical curiocity, the observability of non-thermal dynamics suggests that QMBS may yield distinct physical effects. the nature of which remains to be determined. This dissertation addresses these issues by solving two concrete problems: (i) the mathematical characterization of scar states in the PXP model, the effective model for the experiment, and (ii) the identification of physical consequences of QMBS in both short- and long-time dynamics. In the first part, we clarify the algebraic structure underlying the scar states of the PXP model and derive analytic ansatz for these wavefunctions. The proposed forms make explicit the hidden algebraic structure of the PXP scars and demonstrate how this structure is shared with many other QMBS Hamiltonians, including the AKLT model. The second part investigates dynamical signatures and robustness. Given the fragility of many-body eigenstates to perturbations, identifying which scar characteristics survive realistic perturbations is crucial. In closed systems, we show that out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs) and the associated Lyapunov exponent can distinguish QMBS from generic chaotic states, at least within a semiclassical regime. Specifically, the OTOC growth associated with scar states is parametrically slower and remains slow under small ``scar-breaking'' perturbations. For open systems governed by non-Hermitian dynamics, we introduce a novel non-equilibrium phase, the QMBS phase, where the long-time wavefunction is localized in a small corner of the Hilbert space. We further identify a first-order transition between the QMBS phase and a thermal phase, where the wavefunction becomes delocalized.
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.
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.