- Letter
Scar-induced imbalance in staggered Rydberg ladders
Phys. Rev. B 111, L161101 – Published 2 April, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.111.L161101
Abstract
We demonstrate that the kinematically constrained model of Rydberg atoms on a two-leg ladder with staggered detuning, , has quantum many-body scars (QMBSs) in its spectrum and represents a nonperturbative generalization of the paradigmatic PXP model defined on a chain. We show that these QMBSs result in coherent many-body revivals and site-dependent magnetization dynamics for both Néel and Rydberg vacuum initial states around . The latter feature leads to eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH)-violating finite imbalance at long times in a disorder-free system. This is further demonstrated by constructing appropriate local imbalance operators that display nonzero long-time averages for Néel and vacuum initial states. We also study the fidelity and Shannon entropy for such dynamics which, along with the presence of long-time finite imbalance, brings out the qualitatively different nature of QMBSs in PXP ladders with from those in the PXP chain. Finally, we identify additional exact midspectrum zero modes that stay unchanged as a function of and violate ETH.