Hilbert-space fragmentation from strict confinement
ORAL
Abstract
We study one-dimensional spin-1/2 models in which strict confinement of Ising domain walls leads to the fragmentation of Hilbert space into exponentially many disconnected subspaces. Whereas most previous works emphasize dipole moment conservation as an essential ingredient for such fragmentation, we instead require two commuting U(1) conserved quantities associated with the total domain-wall number and the total magnetization. The latter arises naturally from the confinement of domain walls. Remarkably, while some connected components of the Hilbert space thermalize, others are integrable by Bethe ansatz. We further demonstrate how this Hilbert-space fragmentation pattern arises perturbatively in the confining limit of Z2 gauge theory coupled to fermionic matter, leading to a hierarchy of timescales for motion of the fermions. This model can be realized experimentally in two complementary settings.
*This work is supported by AFOSR FA9550-16-1-0323, FA9550-19-1-0399 (Z.-C. Y.), Iowa State University startup funds (T.I.), NSF PFCQC program, DOE BES QIS program (Award No. DE-SC0019449), DOE ASCR FAR-QC (Award No. DE-SC0020312), DOE ASCR Quantum Testbed Pathfinder program (Award No. DE-SC0019040), AFOSR, ARO MURI, ARL CDQI, and NSF PFC at JQI (Z.-C. Y., F. L., and A. V. G.)
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Presenters
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Zhicheng Yang
- University of Maryland, College Park
- Joint Quantum Institute and Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science, NIST/University of Maryland, College Park