Growing Schr\"odinger's cat states by local unitary time evolution of product states

Abstract

We envisage many-body systems that can be described by quantum spin-chain Hamiltonians with a trivial separable eigenstate. For generic Hamiltonians, such a state represents a quantum scar. We show that, typically, a macroscopically-entangled state naturally grows after a single projective measurement of just one spin in the trivial eigenstate; moreover, we identify a condition under which what is growing is a "Schr\"odinger's cat state". Our analysis does not reveal any particular requirement for the entangled state to develop, provided that the trivial eigenstate does not minimise/maximise a local conservation law. We study two examples explicitly: systems described by generic Hamiltonians and a model that exhibits a $U(1)$ hidden symmetry. The latter can be reinterpreted as a 2-leg ladder in which the interactions along the legs are controlled by the local state on the other leg through transistor-like building blocks.