Exponentially slow thermalization in 1D fragmented dynamics

Abstract: We investigate the thermalization dynamics of 1D systems with local constraints coupled to an infinite temperature bath at one boundary. The coupling to the bath eventually erases the effects of the constraints, causing the system to tend towards a maximally mixed state at long times. We show that for a large class of local constraints, the time at which thermalization occurs can be extremely long. In particular, we present evidence for the following conjecture: when the constrained dynamics displays strong Hilbert space fragmentation, the thermalization time diverges exponentially with system size. We show that this conjecture holds for a wide range of dynamical constraints, including dipole-conserving dynamics, the $tJ_z$ model, and a large class of group-based dynamics, and relate a general proof of our conjecture to a different conjecture about the existence of certain expander graphs.