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Papić, Z.

Publications and source records attributed to Papić, Z..

Systematic Construction of Scarred Many-Body Dynamics in 1D Lattice Models

In this paper, we introduce a family of nonintegrable 1D lattice models that feature robust periodic revivals under a global quench from certain initial product states, thus generalizing the phenomenon of many-body scarring recently observed in Rydberg atom quantum simulators. Our construction is based on a systematic embedding of the single-site unitary dynamics into a kinetically constrained many-body system. We numerically demonstrate that this construction yields new families of models with robust wave-function revivals, and it includes kinetically constrained quantum clock models as a special case. We show that scarring dynamics in these models can be decomposed into a period of nearly free clock precession and an interacting bottleneck, shedding light on their anomalously slow thermalization when quenched from special initial states.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Many-body localization in disorder-free systems: The importance of finite-size constraints

Recently it has been suggested that many-body localization (MBL) can occur in translation-invariant systems, and candidate 1D models have been proposed. We find that such models, in contrast to MBL systems with quenched disorder, typically exhibit much more severe finite-size effects due to the presence of two or more vastly different energy scales. In a finite system, this can artificially split the density of states (DOS) into bands separated by large gaps. We argue for such models to faithfully represent the thermodynamic limit behavior, the ratio of relevant coupling must exceed a certain system-size depedent cutoff, chosen such that various bands in the DOS overlap one another. Setting the parameters this way to minimize finite-size effects, we study several translation-invariant MBL candidate models using exact diagonalization. Based on diagnostics including entanglement and local observables, we observe thermal (ergodic), rather than MBL-like behavior. Our results suggest that MBL in translation-invariant systems with two or more very different energy scales is less robust than perturbative arguments suggest, possibly pointing to the importance of non-perturbative effects which induce delocalization in the thermodynamic limit.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Periodically driven ergodic and many-body localized quantum systems

We study dynamics of isolated quantum many-body systems whose Hamiltonian is switched between two different operators periodically in time. The eigenvalue problem of the associated Floquet operator maps onto an effective hopping problem. Using the effective model, we establish conditions on the spectral properties of the two Hamiltonians for the system to localize in energy space. We find that ergodic systems always delocalize in energy space and heat up to infinite temperature, for both local and global driving. In contrast, many-body localized systems with quenched disorder remain localized at finite energy. We support our conclusions by numerical simulations of disordered spin chains. We argue that our results hold for general driving protocols, and discuss their experimental implications.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗