2021/02/25 by Nishad Maskara, Alexios A Michailidis, Wen Wei Ho +4 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #quant-ph #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.quant-gas #cond-mat.stat-mech #physics.atom-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.127.090602
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 090602 (2021)
arxiv created 2021/02/25 · arxiv updated 2021/09/01
The control of many-body quantum dynamics in complex systems is a key challenge in the quest to reliably produce and manipulate large-scale quantum entangled states. Recently, quench experiments in Rydberg atom arrays (Bluvstein et. al., arXiv:2012.12276) demonstrated that coherent revivals associated with quantum many-body scars can be stabilized by periodic driving, generating stable subharmonic responses over a wide parameter regime. We analyze a simple, related model where these phenomena originate from spatiotemporal ordering in an effective Floquet unitary, corresponding to discrete time-crystalline (DTC) behavior in a prethermal regime. Unlike conventional DTC, the subharmonic response exists only for Neel-like initial states, associated with quantum scars. We predict robustness to perturbations and identify emergent timescales that could be observed in future experiments. Our results suggest a route to controlling entanglement in interacting quantum systems by combining periodic driving with many-body scars.