Emergent dipole moment conservation and subdiffusion in tilted chains

Abstract

We study the transport dynamics of an interacting tilted (Stark) chain. We show that the crossover between diffusive and subdiffusive dynamics is governed by $F\sqrt{L}$, where $F$ is the strength of the field, and $L$ is the wave-length of the excitation. While the subdiffusive dynamics persist for large fields, the corresponding transport coefficient is exponentially suppressed with $F$ so that the finite-time dynamics appear almost frozen. We explain the crossover scale between the diffusive and subdiffusive transport by bounding the dynamics of the dipole moment for arbitrary initial state. We also prove its emergent conservation at infinite temperature. Consequently, the studied chain is one of the simplest experimentally realizable models for which numerical data are consistent with the hydrodynamics of fractons.