Disorder-free localization as a purely classical effect

Disorder-free localization (DFL) is an ergodicity-breaking mechanism that has been shown to occur in lattice gauge theories in the quench dynamics of initial states spanning an extensive number of gauge superselection sectors. Whether this type of DFL is intrinsically a quantum interference effect or can arise classically has hitherto remained an open question whose resolution is pertinent to further understanding the far-from-equilibrium dynamics of gauge theories. In this work, we utilize cellular automaton circuits to model the quench dynamics of large-scale quantum link model (QLM) formulations of $(1+1)\mathrm{D}$ quantum electrodynamics, showing excellent agreement with the exact quantum case for small system sizes. Our results demonstrate that DFL persists in the thermodynamic limit as a purely classical effect arising from the finite-size regularization of the gauge-field operator in the QLM formulation, and that quantum interference, though not a necessary condition, may be employed to enhance DFL.