Dynamical Schwinger Production of Dipole--Antidipole Pairs in a Fractonic Lattice

Abstract

We investigate field-induced excitation production from the unit-filled Mott background of a one-dimensional dipole-conserving Bose--Hubbard chain driven by a periodic quadratic potential, realizing a time-dependent rank-two electric field. Unlike protocols that manipulate pre-existing dipolar or fractonic excitations, we address their production from an initially Mott-like state without prepared dipolar or fractonic excitations. A single correlated hop directly nucleates the compact $|030\rangle$ configuration at the atomic energy $3U$, while a lower manifold derived from $2U$ contains spatially resolved dipole--antidipole configurations. Exact diagonalization shows that finite hopping turns this lower manifold into a dispersive band whose finite-chain edge lies substantially below the compact $3U$ scale. Despite this lower energetic edge, its normalized odd-harmonic spectral weight is perturbatively suppressed as $(J/U)^2$, reflecting virtual hybridization of the initial and final eigenstates. A consistent second-order treatment of the $|1111\rangle\leftrightarrow|0220\rangle$ channel includes diagonal self-energy shifts and predicts a weak-field resonance displacement confirmed by exact time evolution. Extended-chain dynamics shows genuine dipole--antidipole separation together with redistribution into higher-energy many-body sectors. The resulting mechanism provides a condensed-matter analogue of multiphoton dynamical Schwinger production in which exact dipole conservation replaces mobile opposite charges by mobile opposite dipoles, while isolated fractonic charges remain immobile.