Quantum many-body scars leading to time-translation symmetry breaking in kicked interacting spin models

Abstract

We study an Ising model with long-range interactions undergoing a time-periodic kicking. For different initial states we observe persistent period doubling. When there is period doubling we find that the initial state has relevant overlap with Floquet states showing time-translation symmetry breaking, organized in doublets displaying $π$-spectral pairing (as highlighted by the $π$-spectral gap) and long-range order (as shown by the eigenvalues of the magnetization in the doublet). We observe period doubling for initial states with domain walls and tilted spins, and for the latter ones a finite-size scaling of the relevant $π$-shifted gap and magnetization eigenvalues suggests period-doubling oscillations persisting for larger system sizes and lasting a time exponential in the system size. We find that just a minority of Floquet states displays time-translation symmetry breaking while the rest is thermal, a weak-ergodicity breaking situation typical of systems with quantum scars. Although the time-translation symmetry breaking eigenstates are the minority, their number is exponential in the system size and this motivates the period doubling observed for many different initial states.