Many-Body Cages: Disorder-Free Glassiness from Flat Bands in Fock Space and Many-Body Rabi Oscillations
- 1Max-Planck-Institut für Physik komplexer Systeme
- 2University of Augsburg
Abstract
We introduce many-body caging as a novel mechanism for nonthermal behavior in quantum matter. We define many-body cages as eigenstates that, through quantum interference, become localized on a subgraph of the many-body state graph. These many-body cages can lead to the formation of flat bands in the many-body spectrum at characteristic, system-independent energies. These flat bands can realize a novel type of glassy eigenspectrum order in the absence of disorder, which we quantify by a band-overlap order parameter with an intricate, possibly fractal, distribution over the many-body state graph. We further show that these many-body cages exhibit distinctive signatures in experimentally accessible quantities, such as through a nonvanishing long-time memory of the initial condition, and many-body Rabi oscillations set by the characteristic flat-band energies. While our predictions in principle apply to any constrained quantum system, we demonstrate them here for 2D lattice gauge theories and models relevant for current experiments in Rydberg atoms. We expect that these many-body cages offer a promising route to realize nonequilibrium quantum states with novel properties.
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BibTeX
@article{benami2026manybody,
title = {{Many-Body Cages: Disorder-Free Glassiness from Flat Bands in Fock Space and Many-Body Rabi Oscillations}},
author = {Tom Ben-Ami and Markus Heyl and Roderich Moessner},
journal = {Physical Review Letters},
year = {2026},
month = jul,
doi = {10.1103/gmw6-x94c},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1103/gmw6-x94c},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Many-Body Cages: Disorder-Free Glassiness from Flat Bands in Fock Space and Many-Body Rabi Oscillations
AU - Tom Ben-Ami
AU - Markus Heyl
AU - Roderich Moessner
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/07/30
JO - Physical Review Letters
DO - 10.1103/gmw6-x94c
UR - https://doi.org/10.1103/gmw6-x94c
AB - We introduce many-body caging as a novel mechanism for nonthermal behavior in quantum matter. We define many-body cages as eigenstates that, through quantum interference, become localized on a subgraph of the many-body state graph. These many-body cages can lead to the formation of flat bands in the many-body spectrum at characteristic, system-independent energies. These flat bands can realize a novel type of glassy eigenspectrum order in the absence of disorder, which we quantify by a band-overlap order parameter with an intricate, possibly fractal, distribution over the many-body state graph. We further show that these many-body cages exhibit distinctive signatures in experimentally accessible quantities, such as through a nonvanishing long-time memory of the initial condition, and many-body Rabi oscillations set by the characteristic flat-band energies. While our predictions in principle apply to any constrained quantum system, we demonstrate them here for 2D lattice gauge theories and models relevant for current experiments in Rydberg atoms. We expect that these many-body cages offer a promising route to realize nonequilibrium quantum states with novel properties.
SN - 0031-9007
SN - 1079-7114
SN - 1092-0145
ER -