Recent works on observation of discrete time-crystalline signatures throw up major puzzles on the necessity of localization for stabilizing such out-of-equilibrium phases. Motivated by these studies, we delve into a clean interacting Floquet system,
whose quasi-spectrum conforms to the ergodic Wigner-Dyson distribution, yet with an unexpectedly robust, long-lived time-crystalline dynamics in the absence of disorder or fine-tuning. We relate such behavior to a measure zero set of nonthermal Floquet eigenstates with long-range spatial correlations, which coexist with otherwise thermal states at near-infinite temperature and develop a high overlap with a family of translationally invariant, symmetry-broken initial conditions. This resembles the notion of dynamical scars that remain robustly localized throughout a thermalizing Floquet spectrum with fractured structure. We dub such a long-lived discrete time crystal formed in partially nonergodic systems, scarred discrete time crystal which is distinct by nature from those stabilized by either many-body localization or prethermalization mechanism.
We introduce a clean cluster spin chain coupled to fully interacting spinless fermions, forming an unconstrained Z2 lattice gauge theory (LGT) which possesses dynamical proximity effect controlled by the entanglement structure of the initial state. W
e expand the machinery of interaction-driven localization to the realm of LGTs such that for any starting product state, the matter fields exhibits emergent statistical bubble localization, which is driven solely by the cluster interaction, having no topologically trivial non-interacting peer, and thus is of pure dynamical many-body effect. In this vein, our proposed setting provides possibly the minimal model dropping all the conventional assumptions regarding the existence of many-body localization. Through projective measurement of local constituting species, we also identify the coexistence of the disentangled nonergodic matter and thermalized gauge degrees of freedom which stands completely beyond the standard established phenomenology of quantum disentangled liquids. As a by product of self-localization of the proximate fermions, the spin subsystem hosts the long-lived topological edge zero modes, which are dynamically decoupled from the thermalized background Z2 charges of the bulk, and hence remains cold at arbitrary high-energy density. This provides a convenient platform for strong protection of the quantum bits of information which are embedded at the edges of completely ergodic sub-system; the phenomenon that in the absence of such proximity-induced self-localization could, at best, come about with a pre-thermal manner in translational invariant systems. Finally, by breaking local Z2 symmetry of the model, we argue that such admixture of particles no longer remains disentangled and the ergodic gauge degrees of freedom act as a small bath coupled to the localized components.
We enquire into the quasi-many-body localization in topologically ordered states of matter, revolving around the case of Kitaev toric code on ladder geometry, where different types of anyonic defects carry different masses induced by environmental er
rors. Our study verifies that random arrangement of anyons generates a complex energy landscape solely through braiding statistics, which suffices to suppress the diffusion of defects in such multi-component anyonic liquid. This non-ergodic dynamic suggests a promising scenario for investigation of quasi-many-body localization. Computing standard diagnostics evidences that, in such disorder-free many-body system, a typical initial inhomogeneity of anyons gives birth to a glassy dynamics with an exponentially diverging time scale of the full relaxation. A by-product of this dynamical effect is manifested by the slow growth of entanglement entropy, with characteristic time scales bearing resemblance to those of inhomogeneity relaxation. This setting provides a new platform which paves the way toward impeding logical errors by self-localization of anyons in a generic, high energy state, originated in their exotic statistics.
