Genuine quantum scars in Floquet chaotic many-body systems

TL;DR

This paper explores how genuine quantum scars persist or emerge in Floquet chaotic many-body systems, revealing new dynamical regimes and stability conditions through classical and quantum analysis.

Contribution

It demonstrates that Floquet states can remain scarred at high frequencies and uncovers new driving-induced Floquet scars absent in static systems.

Findings

Floquet states remain scarred in the high-frequency limit.

Discovery of driving-induced Floquet scars with no static analog.

Identification of regimes with enhanced and quenched scarring based on frequency.

Abstract

Unstable periodic orbits act as organizing structures for classical chaotic systems and underpin quantum scarring. Long known in single-particle systems, genuine quantum scars based on unstable periodic orbits have been recently extended to isolated many-body systems for time-independent Hamiltonians. Their fate under periodic driving, however, remains largely uncharted, challenged by the expectation that these systems should in general heat to infinite temperature. Here, we investigate how genuine scarring competes with the drive in a Floquet many-body system. Using chaotic spin chains, we demonstrate that Floquet states remain scarred in the high-frequency limit. Beyond this static correspondence, we uncover additional, driving-induced Floquet scars with no static analog. We construct a rich dynamical stability diagram with intermediate-frequency regimes of enhanced and quenched scarring, which we understand with a classical analysis of the Lyapunov exponent. Our results position Floquet systems as a natural platform for tuning the scarring behavior of quantum many-body systems.