Lindblad many-body scars

Journal Article · Wed Feb 11 00:00:00 EST 2026 · Physical Review. E

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/x15w-zchv· OSTI ID:3021130

García-García, Antonio M. ^[1]; Lu, Zhongling ^[1]; Sá, Lucas ^[2]; Verbaarschot, Jacobus J. M. ^[3]

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1. Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China)
2. University of Cambridge (United Kingdom)
3. Stony Brook University, NY (United States)

Quantum many-body scars have received much recent attention for being both intriguing nonergodic states in otherwise quantum chaotic systems and promising candidates to encode quantum information efficiently. So far, these studies have mostly been restricted to Hermitian systems. Here, we study many-body scars in many-body quantum chaotic systems coupled to a Markovian bath, which we term Lindblad many-body scars. They are defined as simultaneous eigenvectors of the Hamiltonian and dissipative parts of the vectorized Liouvillian. Importantly, because their eigenvalues are purely real, they are not related to revivals. The number and nature of the scars depend on both the symmetry of the Hamiltonian and the choice of jump operators. For a dissipative four-body Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model with 𝑁 fermions, either Majorana or complex, we construct analytically some of these Lindblad scars while others could only be obtained numerically. As an example of the former, we identify 𝑁/2+1 scars for complex fermions due to the 𝑈⁡(1) symmetry of the model and two scars for Majorana fermions as a consequence of the parity symmetry. Similar results are obtained for a dissipative XXZ spin chain. We also characterize the physical properties of Lindblad scars. First, the operator size is independent of the disorder realization and has a vanishing variance. By contrast, the operator size for nonscarred states, believed to be quantum chaotic, is well described by a distribution centered around a specific size and a finite variance, which could be relevant for a precise definition of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis in dissipative quantum chaos. Moreover, the entanglement entropy of these scars has distinct features such as a strong dependence on the partition choice and, in certain cases, a large entanglement.

• Research Organization: Stony Brook University, NY (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC); USDOE
• Grant/Contract Number: FG02-88ER40388
• Other Award/Contract Number: 12374138
• OSTI ID: 3021130
• Journal Information: Physical Review. E, Journal Name: Physical Review. E Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 113; ISSN 2470-0053; ISSN 2470-0045
• Publisher: American Physical Society (APS)
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

Eigenstate thermalization
Entanglement entropy
Lindblad equation
Open quantum systems & decoherence
Quantum chaotic systems
Quantum many-body systems
Quantum scars
Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model