Observation of many-body scarring in a Bose-Hubbard quantum simulator

By G. Su, Hui Sun, Ana Hudomal, Jean-Yves Desaules, Zhao-Yu Zhou, Bingda Yang, Jad C. Halimeh, Zhen-Sheng Yuan, Z. Papi'c, Jian-Wei Pan. Physical Review Research, 2022

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The ongoing quest for understanding nonequilibrium dynamics of complex quantum systems underpins the foundation of statistical physics as well as the development of quantum technology. Quantum many-body scarring has recently opened a window into novel mechanisms for delaying the onset of thermalization by preparing the system in special initial states, such as the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ state in a Rydberg atom system. Here we realize many-body scarring in a Bose-Hubbard quantum simulator from previously unknown initial conditions such as the unit-filling state. We develop a quantum-interference protocol for measuring the entanglement entropy and demonstrate that scarring traps the many-body system in a low-entropy subspace. Our work makes the resource of scarring accessible to a broad class of ultracold-atom experiments, and it allows one to explore the relation of scarring to constrained dynamics in lattice gauge theories, Hilbert space fragmentation, and disorder-free localization.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9cbd9edc23599dfaaf16666a6748ce4769adc67a