Localized dynamics following a quantum quench in a non-integrable system: an example on the sawtooth ladder

Abstract

Motivated by the recent discovery of ergodicity breaking in geometrically frustrated systems, we study the quench dynamics of interacting hardcore bosons on a sawtooth ladder. We identify a set of initial states for which this system exhibits characteristic signatures of localization like initial state memory retention and slow growth of entanglement entropy for a wide parameter regime. Remarkably, this localization persists even when the many-body spectrum is thermalizing. We argue that the localized dynamics originates from an interaction induced quantum interference. Our results show that the sawtooth ladder can be a fertile platform for realizing non-equilibrium quantum states of matter.