Anti-scarring from eigenstate stacking in a chaotic spinor condensate

Zhongling Lu, Anton M. Graf, Eric J. Heller, Joonas Keski-Rahkonen, Ceren B. Dag

Published 2025-01-29Version 1

The early-time dynamics of many-body quantum chaotic systems is typically considered non-universal due to the divergence from the predictions of random matrix theory. The eigenstate stacking theorem, on the other hand, asserts uniformity in a phase space for the cumulative probability density of eigenstates that fall within a sufficiently large energy window, opening a route to universality in early times. This fact must hold even in many-body systems. Here, we study a chaotic spinor Bose-Einstein condensate, whose quantum scar dynamics has recently been observed in the laboratory. Quantum scars, living densely near an unstable periodic orbit, must be compensated by anti-scarred states populating sparsely there by the virtue of stacking theorem. We find that such anti-scarring is present in this many-particle system by extending the applicability of stacking theorem. Our work uncovers how the quantum scarring of some eigenstates affects the rest of the chaotic and thermal spectrum in quantum systems with many particles.