Distinct many-body scars and emergent quantum phases driven by competing interactions in two-species Rydberg arrays

Abstract

Rydberg atom arrays composed of multiple atomic species stand as a highly promising platform for quantum computation. However, the underlying physics of these systems as quantum many-body systems remains poorly understood, owing to the intricate competition between attractive and repulsive interactions, phenomena that entirely defy the Rydberg blockade mechanism. We systematically calculate the ground-state phase diagram of alternating two-species atom arrays and their quench dynamics. Our findings reveal several novel quantum states absent in traditional cold-atom platforms, such as the period-4 product state $|1100...⟩$, the period-6 product state $|111000...⟩$, and an order-disorder mixed phase. In the quench dynamics, we confirm ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ ordered state qualify as novel quantum many-body scars. Based on our perturbation analysis, the underlying physics ought to be described by a series of Cooper pair states spanning the entire energy spectrum, rather than the PXP low-energy effective model. A detailed analysis is also provided regarding the experimental preparation of those product states. Numerical evidence demonstrates that the proposed scheme exhibits robustness against typical experimental imperfections, thereby confirming its experimental feasibility. Moreover, the ground-state problem of the two-species array naturally maps to more general combinatorial optimization problems, extending the class of optimization tasks accessible to programmable neutral-atom quantum processors. Our work paves a new way for quantum simulation of novel quantum many-body states, which emerge from the interplay between competing interactions among different atom species and quantum fluctuations.

22 pages, 23 figures