Subspace-restricted thermalization in a correlated-hopping model with strong Hilbert space fragmentation characterized by irreducible strings

Abstract

We introduce a one-dimensional correlated-hopping model of spinless fermions in which a particle can hop between two neighboring sites only if the sites to the left and right of those two sites have different particle numbers. Using a bond-to-site mapping, this model involving four-site terms can be mapped to an assisted pair-flipping model involving only three-site terms. This model shows strong Hilbert space fragmentation. We define irreducible strings (ISs) to label the different fragments, determine the number of fragments, and the sizes of fragments corresponding to some special ISs. In some classes of fragments, the Hamiltonian can be diagonalized completely, and in others it can be seen to have a structure characteristic of models which are not fully integrable. In the largest fragment in our model, the number of states grows exponentially with the system size, but the ratio of this number to the total Hilbert space size tends to zero exponentially in the thermodynamic limit. Within this fragment, we provide numerical evidence that only a weak version of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) remains valid; we call this subspace-restricted ETH. To understand the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of the model, we study the infinite-temperature time-dependent autocorrelation functions starting from a random initial state; we find that these exhibit a different behavior near the boundary compared to the bulk. Finally, we propose an experimental setup to realize our correlated-hopping model.