Periodic classical trajectories and quantum scars in many-spin systems

Abstract

We numerically investigate the stability of exceptional periodic classical trajectories in rather generic chaotic many-body systems and explore a possible connection between these trajectories and exceptional nonthermal quantum eigenstates known as "quantum many-body scars". The systems considered are chaotic spin chains with short-range interactions, both classical and quantum. On the classical side, the chosen periodic trajectories are such that all spins instantaneously point in the same direction, which evolves as a function of time. We find that the largest Lyapunov exponents characterising the stabillity of these trajectories have surprisingly strong and nontrivial dependencies on the interaction constants and chain lengths. In particular, we identify rather long spin chains, where the above periodic trajectories are Lyapunov-stable on many-body energy shells overwhelmingly dominated by chaotic motion. We also find that instabilities around periodic trajectories in modestly large spin chains develop into a transient nearly quasiperiodic non-ergodic regime. In some cases, the lifetime of this regime is extremely long, which we interpret as a manifestation of Arnold diffusion in the vicinity of integrable dynamics. On the quantum side, we numerically investigate the dynamics of quantum states starting with all spins initially pointing in the same direction: these are the quantum counterparts of the initial conditions for the above periodic classical trajectories. Our investigation reveals the existence of quantum many-body scars for numerically accessible finite chains of spins 3/2 and higher. The dynamic thermalisation process dominated by quantum scars is shown to exhibit a slowdown in comparison with generic thermalisation at the same energy. Finally, we identify quantum signatures of the proximity to a classical separatrix of the periodic motion.