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Exact Quantum Many-Body Scar States in the Rydberg-Blockaded Atom Chain

Lin, Cheng-Ju and Motrunich, Olexei I. (2019) Exact Quantum Many-Body Scar States in the Rydberg-Blockaded Atom Chain. Physical Review Letters, 122 (17). Art. No. 173401. ISSN 0031-9007. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.122.173401. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20181203-095532141

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Abstract

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 = ±√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.


Item Type:Article
Related URLs:
URLURL TypeDescription
https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.122.173401DOIArticle
https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.00888arXivDiscussion Paper
ORCID:
AuthorORCID
Lin, Cheng-Ju0000-0001-7898-0211
Motrunich, Olexei I.0000-0001-8031-0022
Alternate Title:Exact Strong-ETH Violating Eigenstates in the Rydberg-blockaded Atom Chain
Additional Information:© 2019 American Physical Society. Received 12 October 2018; revised manuscript received 14 January 2019; published 29 April 2019. We thank V. Albert, M. Endres, B. Roberts, B. Timar, and C. White for valuable discussions. This work was supported by National Science Foundation (NSF) through Grant No. DMR-1619696 and also by the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, an NSF Physics Frontiers Center, with support of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
Group:Institute for Quantum Information and Matter
Funders:
Funding AgencyGrant Number
NSFDMR-1619696
Institute for Quantum Information and Matter (IQIM)UNSPECIFIED
Gordon and Betty Moore FoundationUNSPECIFIED
Issue or Number:17
DOI:10.1103/physrevlett.122.173401
Record Number:CaltechAUTHORS:20181203-095532141
Persistent URL:https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20181203-095532141
Usage Policy:No commercial reproduction, distribution, display or performance rights in this work are provided.
ID Code:91392
Collection:CaltechAUTHORS
Deposited By: Tony Diaz
Deposited On:03 Dec 2018 19:29
Last Modified:16 Nov 2021 03:41

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