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Quantum many-body scarring in 2+1D gauge theories with dynamical matter

Jesse J. Osborne1,2, Ian P. McCulloch3,4, and Jad C. Halimeh2,5,6,7,*

  • *Contact author: jad.halimeh@physik.lmu.de
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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 033130 – Published 3 August, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/k3tx-k2yl

Abstract

Quantum many-body scarring (QMBS) has emerged as an intriguing paradigm of weak ergodicity breaking in nonintegrable quantum many-body models, particularly lattice gauge theories (LGTs) in 1+1 spacetime dimensions. However, an open question is whether QMBS has a true high-energy physics origin, and thus exists in higher-dimensional LGTs with dynamical matter. Given that nonergodic dynamics in d=1 spatial dimension tend to vanish in d>1, it is important to probe this question. Using matrix product state techniques for both finite and infinite systems, we show that QMBS occurs in the 2+1D U(1) quantum link model, as evidenced in persistent coherent oscillations in local observables, a marked slowdown in the growth of the bipartite entanglement entropy, and revivals in the fidelity. Interestingly, we see that QMBS is more robust when the matter degrees of freedom are bosonic rather than fermionic, which we argue is due to the strong nonlocality of the wave function in the latter case. Our results further shed light on the intimate connection between gauge symmetry and QMBS, and highlight the persistence of scarring in higher spatial dimensions. Our findings can be tested in near-term analog and digital quantum simulators, and we demonstrate their accessibility on a recently proposed cold-atom analog quantum simulator.

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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 033130– Published 3 August, 2026
  • Received 29 March 2024
  • Accepted 19 November 2025
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