Quantum Many-Body Scarring in $2+1$D Gauge Theories with Dynamical Matter

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the existence of quantum many-body scarring in 2+1D gauge theories with dynamical matter, revealing persistent nonergodic dynamics and revivals in higher dimensions using matrix product state techniques.

Contribution

It provides the first evidence of quantum many-body scars in 2+1D lattice gauge theories with dynamical matter, showing their robustness and connection to gauge invariance.

Findings

QMBS occurs in 2+1D U(1) quantum link model

Persistent coherent oscillations and revivals observed

QMBS more robust with bosonic matter

Abstract

Quantum many-body scarring (QMBS) has emerged as an intriguing paradigm of weak ergodicity breaking in nonintegrable quantum many-body models, particularly lattice gauge theories (LGTs) in $1+1$ spacetime dimensions. However, an open question is whether QMBS exists in higher-dimensional LGTs with dynamical matter. Given that nonergodic dynamics in $d{=}1$ spatial dimension tend to vanish in $d{>}1$, it is important to probe this question. Using matrix product state techniques for both finite and infinite systems, we show that QMBS occurs in the $2{+}1$D $\mathrm{U}(1)$ quantum link model (QLM), as evidenced in persistent coherent oscillations in local observables, a marked slowdown in the growth of the bipartite entanglement entropy, and revivals in the fidelity. Interestingly, we see that QMBS is more robust when the matter degrees of freedom are bosonic rather than fermionic. Our results further shed light on the intimate connection between gauge invariance and QMBS, and highlight the persistence of scarring in higher spatial dimensions. Our findings can be tested in near-term analog and digital quantum simulators, and we demonstrate their accessibility on a recently proposed cold-atom analog quantum simulator.