Prem, Abhinav | Search NASA

DOE OSTI2024

Quantum fragmentation in the extended quantum breakdown model

We introduce a one-dimensional (1D) extended quantum breakdown model comprising a fermionic and a spin degree of freedom per site, and featuring a spatially asymmetric breakdown-type interaction between the fermions and spins. Furthermore, our model resembles the breakdown process of particles incident into a cloud chamber with nonzero quantum amplitudes of both exciting and not exciting the local vapor atoms. We analytically show that, in the absence of any magnetic field for the spins, the model exhibits Hilbert space fragmentation within each symmetry sector into exponentially many Krylov subspaces and hence displays nonthermal dynamics. Here, we demonstrate that the fragmentation naturally occurs in an entangled basis and thus provides an example of “quantum fragmentation.” Besides establishing the nature of fragmentation analytically, we also study the long-time behavior of the entanglement entropy and its deviation from the expected Page value as a probe of ergodicity in the system. Upon introducing a magnetic field for the spins, most of the Krylov subspaces merge and the model becomes chaotic. Finally, we study the effects of strong randomness on the system and observe behavior similar to that of many-body localized systems.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

DOE OSTI2024

Filling constraints on translation invariant dipole conserving systems

Systems with conserved dipole moment have drawn considerable interest in light of their realization in recent experiments on tilted optical lattices. Here, an important question for such systems is delineating the conditions under which they admit a unique gapped ground state that is consistent with all symmetries. Here, we study one-dimensional translation-invariant lattices that conserve U(1) charge and Z L dipole moment, where discreteness of the dipole symmetry is enforced by periodic boundary conditions, with L the system size. We show that in these systems, a symmetric, gapped, and non-degenerate ground state requires not only integer charge filling, but also a fixed value of the dipole filling, while other fractional dipole fillings enforce either a gapless or symmetry-breaking ground state. In contrast with prior results in the literature, we find that the dipole filling constraint depends both on the charge filling as well as the system size, emphasizing the subtle interplay of dipole symmetry with boundary conditions. We support our results with numerical simulations and exact results.

1-dimensional systems↗