Constraint-induced breaking and restoration of ergodicity in spin-1 PXP models

Abstract

Eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) has played a pivotal role in understanding ergodicity and its breaking in isolated quantum many-body systems. The recent experiment on 51-atom Rydberg quantum simulator by Bernien et al. [Nature (London) 551, 579 (2017)NATUAS0028-083610.1038/nature24622] and subsequent theoretical analysis have shown that hardcore kinetic constraint can lead to weak ergodicity breaking. In this work, we demonstrate, using 1d spin-1 PXP models, that miscellaneous type of ergodicity can be realized by adjusting the hardcore constraints between different components of nearest-neighbor spins. This includes ETH violation due to emergent shattering of Hilbert space into exponentially many subsectors of various sizes, a novel form of nonintegrability with an extensive number of local conserved quantities and strong ergodicity. We analyze these different forms of ergodicity and study their impact on the nonequilibrium dynamics of a Z_{2} initial state. We use forward-scattering approximation to understand the amount of Z_{2} oscillation present in these models. Our work shows that not only ergodicity breaking but an appropriate choice of constraints can lead to restoration of ergodicity as well.