Quasilocalized dynamics from confinement of quantum excitations

Abstract

Thermalization and its suppression in isolated disorder-free quantum many-body systems have recently raised significant interest for both their conceptual and practical implications. Recent numerical studies have detected signatures of suppression of thermalization in one-dimensional lattice gauge theories and quantum spin chains with confined excitations. Here, the authors provide a unified analytical understanding of these phenomena by combining insights from high-energy physics and condensed-matter theory. They show that the corresponding effective dynamics is indistinguishable from a localized one on experimentally accessible timescales.