Stretched-Exponential Melting of a Dynamically Frozen State Under Imprinted Phase Noise in the Ising Chain in a Transverse Field

Abstract: Dynamical freezing is a phenomenon where a set of local observables emerges as approximate but stable conserved quantities (freezes) under a strong periodic drive in a closed quantum system. The expectation values of these emergent conserved quantities exhibit small fluctuations around their respective initial values. These fluctuations do not grow with time, and their magnitude can be tuned down sharply by tuning the drive parameters. In this work, we probe the resilience of dynamical freezing to random perturbations added to the relative phases between the interfering states (elements of a natural basis) in the time-evolving wave function after each drive cycle. We study this in an integrable Ising chain in a time-periodic transverse field. Our key finding is, that the imprinted phase noise melts the dynamically frozen state, but the decay is "slow": a stretched-exponential decay rather than an exponential one. Stretched-exponential decays (also known as Kohlrausch relaxation) are usually expected in complex systems with time-scale hierarchies due to strong disorders or other inhomogeneities resulting in jamming, glassiness, or localization.