Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:0909.4620 · Physical Review A

Finite-size effects in global quantum quenches: Examples from free bosons in an harmonic trap and the one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model

Guillaume Roux

Published May 10, 2010• 97 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We investigate finite-size effects in quantum quenches on the basis of simple energetic arguments. Distinguishing between the low-energy part of the excitation spectrum, below a microscopic energy scale, and the high-energy regime enables one to define a crossover number of particles that is shown to diverge in the small quench limit. Another crossover number is proposed based on the fidelity between the initial and final ground states. Both criteria can be computed using ground-state techniques that work for systems larger than full-spectrum diagonalization. As examples, two models are studied: one with free bosons in an harmonic trap whose frequency is quenched and the one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model that is known to be nonintegrable and for which recent studies have uncovered remarkable nonequilibrium behaviors. The diagonal weights of the time-averaged density matrix are computed, and observables obtained from this diagonal ensemble are compared with the ones from statistical ensembles. It is argued that the ``thermalized'' regime of the Bose-Hubbard model, previously observed in the small quench regime, experiences strong finite-size effects that make a thorough comparison with statistical ensembles difficult. In addition, we show that the nonthermalized regime, emerging on finite-size systems and for large interaction quenches, is not related to the existence of an equilibrium quantum critical point but to the high-energy structure of the energy spectrum in the atomic limit. Its features are reminiscent of the quench from the noninteracting limit to the atomic limit.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.81.053604

Related papers

Relaxation and thermalization in the one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model: A case study for the interaction quantum quench from the atomic limit

Stefan Sorg, Lev Vidmar, Lode Pollet +1 more

Motivated by recent experiments, we study the relaxation dynamics and thermalization in the one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model induced by a global interaction quench. Specifically, we start from an initial state that has exactly one boson per site and is the ground state of a system with infinitely strong repulsive interactions at unit filling. Using exact diagonalization and the density-matrix renormalization-group method, we compute the time dependence of such observables as the multiple occupancy and the momentum distribution function. Typically, the relaxation to stationary values occurs over just a few tunneling times. The stationary values are identical to the so-called diagonal ensemble on the system sizes accessible to our numerical methods and we further observe that the microcanonical ensemble describes the time averages of many observables reasonably well for small and intermediate interaction strength. The expectation values of observables in the canonical ensemble agree quantitatively with the time averages obtained from the quench at small interaction strengths, and qualitatively provide a good description even in parameter regimes where the microcanonical ensemble is not applicable due to finite-size effects. We discuss our numerical results in the framework of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. Moreover, we also observe that the diagonal and the canonical ensembles are practically identical for our initial conditions already on the level of their respective energy distributions for small interaction strengths. Finally, we discuss implications of our results for the interpretation of a recent sudden expansion experiment [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 205301 (2013)], in which the same interaction quench was realized.

arXiv:1405.5404•Physical Review A•Sep 8, 2014•129 citations

Quenches in quantum many-body systems: One-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model reexamined

Guillaume Roux

When a quantum many-body system undergoes a quench, the time-averaged density matrix $\overline{\ensuremath{\rho}}$ governs the time-averaged expectation value of any observable. It is therefore the key object to look at when comparing results with equilibrium predictions. We show that the weights of $\overline{\ensuremath{\rho}}$ can be efficiently computed with Lanczos diagonalization for relatively large Hilbert spaces. As an application, we investigate the crossover from perturbative to nonperturbative quenches in the nonintegrable Bose-Hubbard model: in finite systems, an approximate Boltzmann distribution is observed for small quenches, while for larger ones the distributions do not follow standard equilibrium predictions. Studying thermodynamical features, such as the energy fluctuations and the entropy, show that $\overline{\ensuremath{\rho}}$ bears a memory of the initial state.

arXiv:0810.3720•Physical Review A•Feb 26, 2009•126 citations

Quantum quench in the Luttinger model with finite temperature initial state

Ádám Bácsi, Balázs Dóra

We study the nonequilibrium dynamics of the Luttinger model after a quantum quench, when the initial state is a finite temperature thermal equilibrium state. The diagonal elements of the density matrix in the steady state show thermal features for high temperature initial states only, otherwise they retain highly nonthermal character. The time evolution of Uhlmann fidelity, which measures the distance between the time evolved and initial states, is evaluated for arbitrary initial temperatures and quench protocols. In the long time limit, the overlap between the time evolved and initial system decreases exponentially with the temperature with a universal prefactor. Within perturbation theory, the statistics of final total energy and work are numerically evaluated in the case of a sudden quench, which yield identical distributions at zero temperature. In both statistics, temperature effects are more significant in small systems. The Dirac-$\ensuremath{\delta}$ peak at the adiabatic ground state energy remains present in the probability distribution of the total energy, but disappears from the work distribution at nonzero initial temperatures.

arXiv:1307.7582•Physical Review B•Oct 14, 2013•27 citations

Quantum quench dynamics of the Bose-Hubbard model at finite temperatures

J. M. Zhang, Chao Shen, W. M. Liu

We study quench dynamics of the Bose-Hubbard model by exact diagonalization. Initially, the system is at thermal equilibrium and of a finite temperature. The system is then quenched by changing the on-site interaction strength $U$ suddenly. Both the single-quench and double-quench scenarios are considered. In the former case, the time-averaged density matrix and the real-time evolution are investigated. It is found that though the system thermalizes only in a very narrow range of the quenched value of $U$, it does equilibrate or relax well into a much larger range. Most importantly, it is proven that this is guaranteed for some typical observables in the thermodynamic limit. In order to test whether it is possible to distinguish the unitarily evolving density matrix from the time-averaged (thus time-independent), fully decohered density matrix, a second quench is considered. It turns out that the answer is affirmative or negative depending on whether the intermediate value of $U$ is zero or not.

arXiv:1103.1539•Physical Review A•Jun 17, 2011•17 citations

Ground-state properties of the attractive one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model

N. Oelkers, Jon Links

We study the ground state of the attractive one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model, and in particular the nature of the crossover between the weak interaction and strong interaction regimes for finite system sizes. Indicator properties such as the gap between the ground and first excited energy levels, and the incremental ground-state wave function overlaps are used to locate different regimes. Using mean-field theory we predict that there are two distinct crossovers connected to spontaneous symmetry breaking of the ground state. The first crossover arises in an analysis valid for large $L$ with finite $N$, where $L$ is the number of lattice sites and $N$ is the total particle number. An alternative approach valid for large $N$ with finite $L$ yields a second crossover. For small system sizes we numerically investigate the model and observe that there are signatures of both crossovers. We compare with exact results from Bethe ansatz methods in several limiting cases to explore the validity for these numerical and mean-field schemes. The results indicate that for finite attractive systems there are generically three ground-state phases of the model.

arXiv:cond-mat/0611510•Physical Review B•Mar 19, 2007•77 citations

Universal quantum behavior of interacting fermions in one-dimensional traps: From few particles to the trap thermodynamic limit

Adriano Angelone, Massimo Campostrini B, Ettore Vicari

We investigate the ground-state properties of trapped fermion systems described by the Hubbard model with an external confining potential. We discuss the universal behaviors of systems in different regimes: from few particles, i.e., in dilute regimes, to the trap thermodynamic limit. The asymptotic trap-size (TS) dependence in the dilute regime (increasing the trap size $\ensuremath{\ell}$ keeping the particle number $N$ fixed) is described by a universal TS scaling controlled by the dilute fixed point associated with the metal-to-vacuum quantum transition. This scaling behavior is numerically checked by DMRG simulations of the one-dimensional (1D) Hubbard model. In particular, the particle density and its correlations show crossovers among different regimes: for strongly repulsive interactions they approach those of a spinless Fermi gas, for weak interactions those of a free Fermi gas, and for strongly attractive interactions they match those of a gas of hard-core bosonic molecules. The large-$N$ limit keeping the ratio $N/\ensuremath{\ell}$ fixed corresponds to a 1D trap thermodynamic limit. We address issues related to the accuracy of the local density approximation (LDA). We show that the particle density approaches its LDA in the large-$\ensuremath{\ell}$ limit. When the trapped system is in the metallic phase, corrections at finite $\ensuremath{\ell}$ are $O({\ensuremath{\ell}}^{\ensuremath{-}1})$ and oscillating around the center of the trap. They become significantly larger at the boundary of the fermion cloud, where they get suppressed as $O({\ensuremath{\ell}}^{\ensuremath{-}1/3})$ only. This anomalous behavior arises from the nontrivial scaling at the metal-to-vacuum transition occurring at the boundaries of the fermion cloud.

arXiv:1401.3514•Physical Review A•Feb 28, 2014•25 citations
We investigate finite-size effects in quantum quenches on the basis of simple energetic arguments. Distinguishing between the low-energy part of the excitation spectrum, below a microscopic energy scale, and the high-energy regime enables one to define a crossover number of particles that is shown to diverge in the small quench limit. Another crossover number is proposed based on the fidelity between the initial and final ground states. Both criteria can be computed using ground-state techniques that work for systems larger than full-spectrum diagonalization. As examples, two models are studied: one with free bosons in an harmonic trap whose frequency is quenched and the one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model that is known to be nonintegrable and for which recent studies have uncovered remarkable nonequilibrium behaviors. The diagonal weights of the time-averaged density matrix are computed, and observables obtained from this diagonal ensemble are compared with the ones from statistical ensembles. It is argued that the ``thermalized'' regime of the Bose-Hubbard model, previously observed in the small quench regime, experiences strong finite-size effects that make a thorough comparison with statistical ensembles difficult. In addition, we show that the nonthermalized regime, emerging on finite-size systems and for large interaction quenches, is not related to the existence of an equilibrium quantum critical point but to the high-energy structure of the energy spectrum in the atomic limit. Its features are reminiscent of the quench from the noninteracting limit to the atomic limit.
Motivated by recent experiments, we study the relaxation dynamics and thermalization in the one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model induced by a global interaction quench. Specifically, we start from an initial state that has exactly one boson per site and is the ground state of a system with infinitely strong repulsive interactions at unit filling. Using exact diagonalization and the density-matrix renormalization-group method, we compute the time dependence of such observables as the multiple occupancy and the momentum distribution function. Typically, the relaxation to stationary values occurs over just a few tunneling times. The stationary values are identical to the so-called diagonal ensemble on the system sizes accessible to our numerical methods and we further observe that the microcanonical ensemble describes the time averages of many observables reasonably well for small and intermediate interaction strength. The expectation values of observables in the canonical ensemble agree quantitatively with the time averages obtained from the quench at small interaction strengths, and qualitatively provide a good description even in parameter regimes where the microcanonical ensemble is not applicable due to finite-size effects. We discuss our numerical results in the framework of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. Moreover, we also observe that the diagonal and the canonical ensembles are practically identical for our initial conditions already on the level of their respective energy distributions for small interaction strengths. Finally, we discuss implications of our results for the interpretation of a recent sudden expansion experiment [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 205301 (2013)], in which the same interaction quench was realized.
When a quantum many-body system undergoes a quench, the time-averaged density matrix $\overline{\ensuremath{\rho}}$ governs the time-averaged expectation value of any observable. It is therefore the key object to look at when comparing results with equilibrium predictions. We show that the weights of $\overline{\ensuremath{\rho}}$ can be efficiently computed with Lanczos diagonalization for relatively large Hilbert spaces. As an application, we investigate the crossover from perturbative to nonperturbative quenches in the nonintegrable Bose-Hubbard model: in finite systems, an approximate Boltzmann distribution is observed for small quenches, while for larger ones the distributions do not follow standard equilibrium predictions. Studying thermodynamical features, such as the energy fluctuations and the entropy, show that $\overline{\ensuremath{\rho}}$ bears a memory of the initial state.
We study the nonequilibrium dynamics of the Luttinger model after a quantum quench, when the initial state is a finite temperature thermal equilibrium state. The diagonal elements of the density matrix in the steady state show thermal features for high temperature initial states only, otherwise they retain highly nonthermal character. The time evolution of Uhlmann fidelity, which measures the distance between the time evolved and initial states, is evaluated for arbitrary initial temperatures and quench protocols. In the long time limit, the overlap between the time evolved and initial system decreases exponentially with the temperature with a universal prefactor. Within perturbation theory, the statistics of final total energy and work are numerically evaluated in the case of a sudden quench, which yield identical distributions at zero temperature. In both statistics, temperature effects are more significant in small systems. The Dirac-$\ensuremath{\delta}$ peak at the adiabatic ground state energy remains present in the probability distribution of the total energy, but disappears from the work distribution at nonzero initial temperatures.
We study quench dynamics of the Bose-Hubbard model by exact diagonalization. Initially, the system is at thermal equilibrium and of a finite temperature. The system is then quenched by changing the on-site interaction strength UUU suddenly. Both the single-quench and double-quench scenarios are considered. In the former case, the time-averaged density matrix and the real-time evolution are investigated. It is found that though the system thermalizes only in a very narrow range of the quenched value of UUU, it does equilibrate or relax well into a much larger range. Most importantly, it is proven that this is guaranteed for some typical observables in the thermodynamic limit. In order to test whether it is possible to distinguish the unitarily evolving density matrix from the time-averaged (thus time-independent), fully decohered density matrix, a second quench is considered. It turns out that the answer is affirmative or negative depending on whether the intermediate value of UUU is zero or not.
We study the ground state of the attractive one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model, and in particular the nature of the crossover between the weak interaction and strong interaction regimes for finite system sizes. Indicator properties such as the gap between the ground and first excited energy levels, and the incremental ground-state wave function overlaps are used to locate different regimes. Using mean-field theory we predict that there are two distinct crossovers connected to spontaneous symmetry breaking of the ground state. The first crossover arises in an analysis valid for large LLL with finite NNN, where LLL is the number of lattice sites and NNN is the total particle number. An alternative approach valid for large NNN with finite LLL yields a second crossover. For small system sizes we numerically investigate the model and observe that there are signatures of both crossovers. We compare with exact results from Bethe ansatz methods in several limiting cases to explore the validity for these numerical and mean-field schemes. The results indicate that for finite attractive systems there are generically three ground-state phases of the model.
We investigate the ground-state properties of trapped fermion systems described by the Hubbard model with an external confining potential. We discuss the universal behaviors of systems in different regimes: from few particles, i.e., in dilute regimes, to the trap thermodynamic limit. The asymptotic trap-size (TS) dependence in the dilute regime (increasing the trap size $\ensuremath{\ell}$ keeping the particle number NNN fixed) is described by a universal TS scaling controlled by the dilute fixed point associated with the metal-to-vacuum quantum transition. This scaling behavior is numerically checked by DMRG simulations of the one-dimensional (1D) Hubbard model. In particular, the particle density and its correlations show crossovers among different regimes: for strongly repulsive interactions they approach those of a spinless Fermi gas, for weak interactions those of a free Fermi gas, and for strongly attractive interactions they match those of a gas of hard-core bosonic molecules. The large-NNN limit keeping the ratio $N/\ensuremath{\ell}$ fixed corresponds to a 1D trap thermodynamic limit. We address issues related to the accuracy of the local density approximation (LDA). We show that the particle density approaches its LDA in the large-$\ensuremath{\ell}$ limit. When the trapped system is in the metallic phase, corrections at finite $\ensuremath{\ell}$ are $O({\ensuremath{\ell}}^{\ensuremath{-}1})$ and oscillating around the center of the trap. They become significantly larger at the boundary of the fermion cloud, where they get suppressed as $O({\ensuremath{\ell}}^{\ensuremath{-}1/3})$ only. This anomalous behavior arises from the nontrivial scaling at the metal-to-vacuum transition occurring at the boundaries of the fermion cloud.