Hunt for quantum many-body scars in real materials

Experimental progress now allows for the preparation and study of quantum many-body systems that are well isolated from the environment, thereby giving access to non-equilibrium phenomena. One such phenomenon is the celebrated quantum-many body scar states that are responsible for the unusual dynamics, i.e. distinctive coherent features that are absent in generic quench experiments, unexpectedly observed in one-dimensional Rydberg atom systems.

The scars form a set of highly excited energy eigenstates that defy the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis rendering widely employed statistical mechanics tools inapplicable. Thus, many open questions concerning the scar states remain unanswered, and one such question is whether there are any real materials that contain scars in their spectrum. To shed light on that we investigate spin systems focusing on XXZ spin chains and ladders. Possible experimental realizations such as rare-earth systems are scrutinized. If time permits, generalizations to two-dimensional spin systems will be discussed.