Analytical theory of cat scars with discrete time crystalline dynamics in Floquet systems

TL;DR

This paper develops an analytical framework for understanding eigenstate orders and discrete time crystal dynamics in Floquet systems with strong Ising interactions, revealing new scar patterns and stability properties.

Contribution

It introduces a spectral pairing theory and symmetry indicator method to identify and analyze novel inhomogeneous cat scar eigenstates in Floquet systems without disorder.

Findings

Identification of tunable cat scar eigenstates with local DTC dynamics

Discovery of unexpected inhomogeneous scar patterns

Proven exponential suppression of spin fluctuations in Floquet eigenstates

Abstract

We reconstruct the spectral pairing (SP) theories to enable analytical descriptions of eigenstate spatiotemporal orders in translation-invariant systems without prethermal conditions. It is shown that the strong Ising interactions and drivings alone stabilize a class of ``cat scar" eigenstates with tunable patterns, which lead to {\em local} discrete time crystal (DTC) dynamics. They exhibit Fock space localization and long-range correlations robust against generic perturbations in a disorder-free scenario. In particular, we introduce a symmetry indicator method to enumerate cat scars, with which a set of unexpected inhomogeneous scar patterns are identified in addition to the ferromagnetic scars found before. These scars enforce DTC dynamics with rigid inhomogeneous patterns, offering a viable way to verify underlying eigenstate properties experimentally. Further, we prove rigorously that the strong Ising interactions enforce a selection rule for perturbations of different orders, which imposes an exponential suppression of spin fluctuations for Floquet eigenstates. Based on this property, three analytical scaling relations are proved to characterize the amplitudes, Fock space localization, and lifetime for DTC dynamics associated with cat scars. We further provide two practical methods to check whether certain DTC phenomena are dominated by single-spin dynamics or due to genuine interaction effects.