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Grand-canonical-like thermalization of quantum many-body scars in kinetically constrained systems
Jia-Wei Wang1, Xiang-Fa Zhou1, Guang-Can Guo1
1University of Science and Technology of China, University of Science and Technology of China, University of Science and Technology of China, University of Science and Technology of China, University of Science and Technology of China, Laboratory of Quantum Information, Hefei 230026, China; Anhui Province Key Laboratory of Quantum Network, Hefei 230026, China; CAS Center for Excellence in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, Hefei 230026, China; Hefei National Laboratory, Hefei 230088, China; and Anhui Center for Fundamental Sciences in Theoretical Physics, Hefei 230026, China.
Abstract:
Quantum many-body scars (QMBSs) in kinetically constrained systems provide a prominent example of weak ergodicity breaking beyond the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH). In this work we formulate an open-system perspective on constrained dynamics, where kinetic constraints are interpreted as a balance of information exchange between the system and an auxiliary environment. This viewpoint naturally introduces a quasiparticle number that characterizes the information balance and motivates a revised ETH for constrained systems. Specifically, the eigenstate expectation values of local observables can be approximated by a grand-canonical-like average defined on the energy-quasiparticle-number plane. For the off-diagonal part of local observables, the relevant density of states (DOS) is generalized to the same plane and controls the typical magnitude of off-diagonal matrix elements. The revised ETH accurately describes long-time averages and temporal fluctuations of local observables for both QMBSs and thermal dynamics. Within this framework, scarred dynamics arises from low-DOS regions on the energy-quasiparticle-number plane, where off-diagonal elements are less suppressed and the approximate spectrum-generating algebra becomes more pronounced. Our results provide a unified description of thermalization and QMBSs in kinetically constrained systems.
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