Hilbert Space Fragmentation and Scar Time Crystallinity in Driven Homogeneous Central Spin Models

ORAL

Abstract

We study the stroboscopic non-equilibrium quantum dynamics of periodically driven central spin systems with XXZ-type interaction. The system exhibits a strong fragmentation of Hilbert space into a four-dimensional Floquet Krylov subspace and discrete time-translation symmetry breaking due to oscillations between two disjoint regions within each Krylov subspace. Analytical and numerical analyses of the stability of the fragmented subspaces reveal the existence of scar states corresponding to fully polarized satellite spins, which also possess high overlap with Floquet eigenstates having atypically low bipartite entanglement entropy. We show that the period-doubling indicative of time crystalline behavior arises for highly polarized initial states and persists in the presence of magnetic field disorder, pulse errors, and other perturbative effects. Our work is relevant for experiments on semiconductor quantum dots or defect spins hyperfine-coupled to surrounding nuclei.

* This work is supported by the NSF (grant no. 1847078) and the EU Horizon 2020 programme (GA 862035 QLUSTER).

Presenters

  • Abhishek Kumar

    Virginia Tech

Authors

  • Abhishek Kumar

    Virginia Tech

  • Rafail Frantzeskakis

    University of Crete

  • Sophia E Economou

    Virginia Tech, Department of Physics, Virginia Tech, and Virginia Tech Center for Quantum Information Science and Engineering, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061, USA

  • Edwin Barnes

    Virginia Tech