We numerically study the mean-field dynamics of a (2+1)D spin system with thousands of spins and show that experimentally-feasible two-body Ising interactions can stabilize a prethermal Z2 lattice gauge structure with dynamical matter, manifested by a gauge-invariant plateau with exponentially long lifetime. Eventually, the metastable prethermal Z2 gauge structure breaks down via a proliferation of Gauss' law defects, similar to bubble formation in false vacuum decay. In this regime, we discover spatio-temporal correlations described by a non-linear surface growth consistent with the (1+1)D Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) universality class. We benchmark our results in small systems against semi-classical discrete time Wigner approximation (DTWA) and exact diagonalization (ED), where the breakdown of DTWA signals the emergence of an extensive number of local symmetries that strongly influence the thermalization pathway. Our model provides a testbed for quantum simulators and is directly implementable in large-scale arrays of Rydberg atoms.
*LH and AMR acknowledge support by the Simons Collaboration on Ultra-Quantum Matter, which is a grant from the Simons Foundation (651440), and the NSF JILA-PFC PHY-2317149. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programm (Grant Agreement no 948141) — ERC Starting Grant SimUcQuam. LH and FG were funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany's Excellence Strategy – EXC2111 – 390814868. AP acknowledges support by Trinity College Cambridge. HZ was funded by the Innovation Program for Quantum Science and Technology (No. 2024ZD0301800). J.C.H. acknowledges funding by the Max Planck Society, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany's Excellence Strategy EXC-2111 - 390814868, and the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation program (Grant Agreement No. 101165667) – ERC Starting Grant QuSiGauge.
