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Grand Canonical-like Thermalization of Quantum Many-body Scars

Quantum Physics 2026-03-09 v1

Abstract

Quantum many-body scar (QMBS) in kinetically constrained quantum systems challenges the conventional eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH). We develop an effective open-system description for constrained dynamics and introduce the definition of quasiparticle number in the system. Based on this, we formulate a revised ETH that accounts for both diagonal and off-diagonal structures of local observables. By introducing the cross coherence purity (CCP), we obtain a unified characterization of off-diagonal matrix elements and show that the relevant density of states (DOS) is determined by the distribution of eigenstates on the energy--quasiparticle-number plane. We numerically verify an inverse relation between the CCP and this generalized DOS. Applied to the quantum many-body scar model, the revised ETH accurately predicts long-time averages and temporal fluctuations of local observables and explains their dependence on initial states. Our framework shows that the anomalous fluctuations and quasi-periodic dynamics of scar states arise naturally from low-DOS regions. These results provide a unified understanding of thermalization and QMBS in kinetically constrained systems.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.06075,
  title  = {Grand Canonical-like Thermalization of Quantum Many-body Scars},
  author = {Jia-wei Wang and Xiang-Fa Zhou and Guang-Can Guo and Zheng-Wei Zhou},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.06075},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

11 pages, 6 figures, including Appendix