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arXiv:0904.3746 · Physical Review Letters

Breakdown of Thermalization in Finite One-Dimensional Systems

Marcos Rigol

Published Sep 2, 2009• 534 citations
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Abstract

We use quantum quenches to study the dynamics and thermalization of hard core bosons in finite one-dimensional lattices. We perform exact diagonalizations and find that, far away from integrability, few-body observables thermalize. We then study the breakdown of thermalization as one approaches an integrable point. This is found to be a smooth process in which the predictions of standard statistical mechanics continuously worsen as the system moves toward integrability. We establish a direct connection between the presence or absence of thermalization and the validity or failure of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis, respectively.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.103.100403

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We use quantum quenches to study the dynamics and thermalization of hard core bosons in finite one-dimensional lattices. We perform exact diagonalizations and find that, far away from integrability, few-body observables thermalize. We then study the breakdown of thermalization as one approaches an integrable point. This is found to be a smooth process in which the predictions of standard statistical mechanics continuously worsen as the system moves toward integrability. We establish a direct connection between the presence or absence of thermalization and the validity or failure of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis, respectively.
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We study the dynamics and thermalization of strongly correlated fermions in finite one-dimensional lattices after a quantum quench. Our calculations are performed using exact diagonalization. We focus on one- and two-body observables such as the momentum distribution function [n(k)][n(k)][n(k)] and the density-density structure factor [N(k)][N(k)][N(k)], respectively, and study the effects of approaching an integrable point. We show that while the relaxation dynamics and thermalization of N(k)N(k)N(k) for fermions is very similar to the one of hardcore bosons, the behavior of n(k)n(k)n(k) is distinctively different. The latter observable exhibits a slower relaxation dynamics in fermionic systems. We identify the origin of this behavior, which is related to the off-diagonal matrix elements of n(k)n(k)n(k) in the basis of the eigenstates of the Hamiltonian. More generally, we find that thermalization occurs far away from integrability and that it breaks down as one approaches the integrable point.
We investigate the onset of thermalization and quantum chaos in finite one-dimensional gapped systems of hard-core bosons. Integrability in these systems is broken by next-nearest-neighbor repulsive interactions, which also generate a superfluid to insulator transition. By employing full exact diagonalization, we study chaos indicators and few-body observables. We show that with increasing system size, chaotic behavior is seen over a broader range of parameters and, in particular, deeper into the insulating phase. Concomitantly, we observe that, as the system size increases, the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis extends its range of validity inside the insulating phase and is accompanied by the thermalization of the system.
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After a quench, observables in an integrable system may not relax to the standard thermal values, but can relax to the ones predicted by the generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE) [M. Rigol et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 050405 (2007)]. The GGE has been shown to accurately describe observables in various one-dimensional integrable systems, but the origin of its success is not fully understood. Here we introduce a microcanonical version of the GGE and provide a justification of the GGE based on a generalized interpretation of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis, which was previously introduced to explain thermalization of nonintegrable systems. We study relaxation after a quench of one-dimensional hard-core bosons in an optical lattice. Exact numerical calculations for up to 10 particles on 50 lattice sites (≈10(10) eigenstates) validate our approach.
We study how the proximity to an integrable point or to localization as one approaches the atomic limit, as well as the mixing of symmetries in the chaotic domain, may affect the onset of thermalization in finite one-dimensional systems. We consider systems of hard-core bosons at half-filling with nearest-neighbor hopping and interaction, and next-nearest-neighbor interaction. The latter breaks integrability and induces a ground-state superfluid to insulator transition. By full exact diagonalization, we study chaos indicators and few-body observables. We show that when different symmetry sectors are mixed, chaos indicators associated with the eigenvectors, contrary to those related to the eigenvalues, capture the onset of chaos. The results for the complexity of the eigenvectors and for the expectation values of few-body observables confirm the validity of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis in the chaotic regime, and therefore the occurrence of thermalization. We also study the properties of the off-diagonal matrix elements of few-body observables in relation to the transition from integrability to chaos and from chaos to localization.