Certain BCS wavefunctions are quantum many-body scars

TL;DR

This paper constructs many-body scar states in fermionic lattice models with strong correlations, linking superconductivity and weak ergodicity breaking, and proposes a protocol for experimental initialization.

Contribution

It introduces a method to create and identify BCS-like scar states in fermionic systems, connecting superconductivity with quantum many-body scars.

Findings

BCS scar states can be made the ground state by adding a pairing potential.

The BCS-like ground state maximizes unconventional magnetic correlations.

The Hamiltonian governing scar dynamics matches the BCS mean-field Hamiltonian.

Abstract

We construct many-body scar states in multi-flavour fermionic lattice models that possess strong magnetic or superconducting correlations of a given type specified by a unitary matrix $A$. One of the states maximizes the one-point correlations over the full Hilbert space and has the form of the BCS wavefunction. It may always be made the ground state by adding the correlations as a "pairing potential" to any Hamiltonian supporting group-invariant scars. In our single-flavour, spin-full fermions example we consider a superconducting $A$. The BCS scar ground state is a linear combination of the well-known $\eta$-pairing states. In the multi-orbital fermions example the BCS-like ground state maximizes unconventional magnetic correlations. The broad class of eligible Hamiltonians includes many conventional condensed matter interactions. The part of the Hamiltonian that governs the exact dynamics of the scar subspace coincides with the BCS mean-field Hamiltonian. We therefore show that its eigenstates are many-body scars that are decoupled from the rest of the Hilbert space and thereby protected from thermalization. Our results point out a connection between the fields of superconductivity and weak ergodicity breaking (many-body scars) and will hopefully encourage further investigations. They also provide the first feasible protocol to initialize a fermionic system to a scar state in (a quantum simulator) experiment.