Abstract

Quantum many-body scars (QMBS) constitute a new quantum dynamical regime in which rare "scarred" eigenstates mediate weak ergodicity breaking. One open question is to understand the most general setting in which these states arise. In this work, we develop a generic construction that embeds a new class of QMBS, rainbow scars, into the spectrum of an arbitrary Hamiltonian. Unlike other examples of QMBS, rainbow scars display extensive bipartite entanglement entropy while retaining a simple entanglement structure. Specifically, the entanglement scaling is volume-law for a random bipartition, while scaling for a fine-tuned bipartition is subextensive. When internal symmetries are present, the construction leads to multiple, and even towers, of rainbow scars revealed through distinctive non-thermal dynamics. Remarkably, certain symmetries can lead rainbow scars to arise in translation-invariant models. To this end, we provide an experimental road map for realizing rainbow scar states in a Rydberg-atom quantum simulator, leading to coherent oscillations distinct from the strictly sub-volume-law QMBS previously realized in the same system.

Publication Details
Publication Type
Journal Article
Year of Publication
2022
Volume
105
DOI
10.1103/PhysRevB.105.L060301
Journal
Physical Review B
Download the Publication
Contributors
Date Published
02/2022