Quantum Hilbert Space Fragmentation and Entangled Frozen States

Quantum Physics [Submitted on 6 Apr 2026] Quantum Hilbert Space Fragmentation and Entangled Frozen States Zihan Zhou, Tian-Hua Yang, Bo-Ting Chen We find that rank deficiency of the local Hamiltonian in a classically fragmented model is the key mechanism leading to quantum Hilbert space fragmentation. The rank deficiency produces local null directions that can generate entangled frozen states (EFS): entangled states embedded in mobile classical Krylov sectors that do not evolve under Hamiltonian dynamics. When the entangled frozen subspace is non-empty, the mobile classical sector splits into an mobile quantum Krylov subspace and an entangled frozen subspace, and the model exhibits quantum fragmentation. We establish this mechanism in four models of increasing symmetry structure: an asymmetric qubit projector with no symmetry, the \mathbb{Z}_2-symmetric GHZ projector, a \mathbb{Z}_3-symmetric cyclic qutrit projector, and the Temperley-Lieb model. For the asymmetric and GHZ projector models, we obtain closed-form expressions for irreducible Krylov dimensions, degeneracies, and sector multiplicities. Further, we introduce the notion of weak and strong quantum fragmentation, the quantum counterpart of the weak-strong distinction in classical fragmentation. After removing the EFS, the mobile quantum Krylov subspace decomposes into irreducible blocks. In the weak case, the number of irreducible blocks remains \mathcal{O}(1), each is individually ergodic with Gaussian Orthogonal Ensemble (GOE) level statistics, and the unresolved spectrum follows an mGOE distribution. In the strong case, the number of irreducible blocks grows with system size, and the gap-ratio distribution approaches Poisson as L\to\infty. Comments: 28 pages, 4 figures Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech); Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) Cite as: arXiv:2604.05218 [quant-ph]   (or arXiv:2604.05218v1 [quant-ph] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.05218 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Zihan Zhou [view email] [v1] Mon, 6 Apr 2026 22:31:42 UTC (72 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: quant-ph < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-04 Change to browse by: cond-mat cond-mat.stat-mech cond-mat.str-el References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)