Prethermalization in the PXP Model under Continuous Quasiperiodic Driving

Abstract

Motivated by recent experiments realizing long-lived non-equilibrium states in aperiodically driven quantum many-body systems, we investigate the dynamics of a quasiperiodically driven Rydberg atom chain in the strong Rydberg blockage regime. In this regime, the system is kinetically constrained and the `PXP' model describes its dynamics. Even without driving, the PXP model exhibits many-body scarring and resultant persistent oscillations for dynamics originating from the N\'{e}el-ordered initial state. We demonstrate that a rich array of dynamical behaviors emerge when the system is subjected to a continuous drive. In the high-frequency regime, the system exhibits revivals and oscillations for the N\'{e}el ordered initial state both for periodic and quasi-periodic drives. We trace the origin of this non-ergodicity to an effective PXP Hamiltonian for both of these driving protocols in this regime. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the behavior of the fidelity and the entanglement entropy is non-monotonic at low frequencies in the high-amplitude regime. This leads to several re-entrant scarring transitions both for both the N\'{e}el-ordered and the fully polarized initial state. Our results demonstrate that continuous quasi-periodic drive protocols can provide a promising route to realize prethermal phases of matter in kinetically constrained systems.