Quantum Caging in Interacting Many-Body All-Bands-Flat Lattices

Abstract

We consider translationally invariant tight-binding all-bands-flat networks which lack dispersion. In a recent work [arXiv:2004.11871] we derived the subset of these networks which preserves nonlinear caging, i.e. keeps compact excitations compact in the presence of Kerr-like local nonlinearities. Here we replace nonlinear terms by Bose-Hubbard interactions and study quantum caging. We prove the existence of degenerate energy renormalized compact states for two and three particles, and use an inductive conjecture to generalize to any finite number M of participating particles in one dimension. Our results explain and generalize previous observations for two particles on a diamond chain [Vidal et.al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 3906 (2000)]. We further prove that quantum caging conditions guarantee the existence of extensive sets of conserved quantities in any lattice dimension, as first revealed in [Tovmasyan et al Phys. Rev. B 98, 134513 (2018)] for a set of specific networks. Consequently transport is realized through moving pairs of interacting particles which break the single particle caging.