A system composed of identical spins and described by a quantum mechanical pure state is analyzed within the statistical framework presented in Part I of this work. We explicitly derive the typical values of the entropy, of the energy, and of the equilibrium reduced density matrix of a subsystem for the two different statistics introduced in Part I. In order to analyze their consistency with thermodynamics, these quantities of interest are evaluated in the limit of large number of components of the isolated system. The main results can be summarized as follows: typical values of the entropy and of the equilibrium reduced density matrix as functions of the internal energy in the fixed expectation energy ensemble do not satisfy the requirement of thermodynamics. On the contrary, the thermodynamical description is recovered from the random pure state ensemble (RPSE), provided that one considers systems large enough. The thermodynamic limit of the considered properties for the spin system reveals a number of important features. First canonical statistics (and thus, canonical typicality as long as the fluctuations around the average value are small) emerges without the need of assuming the microcanonical space for the global pure state. Moreover, we rigorously prove (i) the equivalence of the "global temperature," derived from the entropy equation of state, with the "local temperature" determining the canonical state of the subsystems; and (ii) the equivalence between the RPSE typical entropy and the canonical entropy for the overall system.
A system composed of identical spins and described by a quantum mechanical pure state is analyzed within the statistical framework presented in Part I of this work. We explicitly derive the typical values of the entropy, of the energy, and of the equilibrium reduced density matrix of a subsystem for the two different statistics introduced in Part I. In order to analyze their consistency with thermodynamics, these quantities of interest are evaluated in the limit of large number of components of the isolated system. The main results can be summarized as follows: typical values of the entropy and of the equilibrium reduced density matrix as functions of the internal energy in the fixed expectation energy ensemble do not satisfy the requirement of thermodynamics. On the contrary, the thermodynamical description is recovered from the random pure state ensemble (RPSE), provided that one considers systems large enough. The thermodynamic limit of the considered properties for the spin system reveals a number of important features. First canonical statistics (and thus, canonical typicality as long as the fluctuations around the average value are small) emerges without the need of assuming the microcanonical space for the global pure state. Moreover, we rigorously prove (i) the equivalence of the "global temperature," derived from the entropy equation of state, with the "local temperature" determining the canonical state of the subsystems; and (ii) the equivalence between the RPSE typical entropy and the canonical entropy for the overall system.
Recently, the possibility of investigating single molecule, or single spin observables, as well as the necessity of a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying quantum dynamics in order to obtain nanoscale devices and nanostructered materials suitable for quantum computing tasks, have revived the interest in foundational aspects of quantum statistical mechanics. This thesis aims to give a contribution to this field by re-considering the statistical characterization of a quantum system at the light of some paradigmatic changes in our understanding of quantum theory which have taken place in the last two decades. In particular the impressive development of quantum information theory has changed the perceptions of quantum entanglement: for a long time it has been considered a somewhat paradoxical property of the matter at the atomic scale, but now it is regarded as an essential and ubiquitous phenomenon whose consequences are affecting the very macroscopic world that we experience. Still the decoherence program has brought out the importance of considering a quantum system together with its environment in order to clarify some key aspects of quantum dynamics. Thus, we start from the idea that quantum correlations are ubiquitous and somewhat uncontrollable in systems with many degrees of freedom which are typically considered in statistical mechanics. As a consequence we assume the standpoint that quantum statistical mechanics has not to be based on the underlying idea of a collection of many, independent quantum systems but rather it has to emerge at the level of a global wavefunction (pure state) which describes the system as well as its environment as a whole. In order to investigate the consequences of these assumptions we study the equilibrium distribution of an isolated quantum system. This is defined, in analogy with the ergodic foundations of classical statistical mechanics, on the basis of the time evolution of the quantum state. Then, we study the emergence of thermodynamic properties in a quantum system by studying the probability distribution of some function of interests, as the entropy and the equilibrium state of a subsystem, on Ensembles of Pure States. Such a probability distribution is derived from the geometry of the Hilbert space, and the theoretical tools suitable for its characterization are developed. On the one hand we perform a numerical sampling of the ensemble distributions by employing Monte Carlo techniques, on the other hand simpler analytical approximation of the geometrical distributions are derived by means of a maximum entropy principle. Model systems composed of an ensemble of spins are chosen to illustrate the salient features which emerge from the developed theoretical framework: the main point is that the Ensemble Distributions of “thermodynamic observables” (entropy or equilibrium state of a subsystem) are sharply peaked around a typical value. From the analysis it emerges that each of the overwhelming majority of the wavefunctions which has appreciable weight in the considered ensemble, is characterized by the same value of the “macroscopic” functions. This is a striking evidence of the “typicality” of these properties. In the essence, our impossibility to know the state of the system in detail does not matter, just for the remarkable fact that almost all quantum states behave essentially in the same way. By virtue of this typicality the study of the behaviour of the typical values of the thermodynamic function become meaningful. Notably, under certain conditions, one recovers the results of standard statistical mechanics, that is, the equilibrium average of the state of a subsystem can be cast in the Boltzmann canonical form at the temperature given by the usual thermodynamical relation . In the second part of the thesis we consider the dynamical aspects of the equilibrium state of a subsystem interacting with its environment. The fluctuations around the equilibrium average critically depends on the entanglement between the system and the environment and on the form of the interaction Hamiltonian. The connection between the dynamics of the fluctuations of an observable at the equilibrium and the relaxation toward the equilibrium from a “non typical” initial value is also investigated with the aid of simple model systems. The study presented in this thesis was partly motivated by a critical analysis of the statistical methods available for the theoretical modelling of magnetic resonance experiments. One of these, the Stochastic Liouville Equation, has been employed in a work completed during the first year of my Ph.D. program in order to interpret some feature of a two dimensional electron spin resonance experiment, [Fresch B., Frezzato D., Moro G. J., Kothe G., Freed J. H.; J. Phys. Chem. B., 110, 24238, (2006)].
Descriptions of molecular systems usually refer to two distinct theoretical frameworks. On the one hand the quantum pure state, i.e., the wavefunction, of an isolated system is determined to calculate molecular properties and their time evolution according to the unitary Schrödinger equation. On the other hand a mixed state, i.e., a statistical density matrix, is the standard formalism to account for thermal equilibrium, as postulated in the microcanonical quantum statistics. In the present paper an alternative treatment relying on a statistical analysis of the possible wavefunctions of an isolated system is presented. In analogy with the classical ergodic theory, the time evolution of the wavefunction determines the probability distribution in the phase space pertaining to an isolated system. However, this alone cannot account for a well defined thermodynamical description of the system in the macroscopic limit, unless a suitable probability distribution for the quantum constants of motion is introduced. We present a workable formalism assuring the emergence of typical values of thermodynamic functions, such as the internal energy and the entropy, in the large size limit of the system. This allows the identification of macroscopic properties independently of the specific realization of the quantum state. A description of material systems in agreement with equilibrium thermodynamics is then derived without constraints on the physical constituents and interactions of the system. Furthermore, the canonical statistics is recovered in all generality for the reduced density matrix of a subsystem.
Investigation on foundational aspects of quantum statistical mechanics recently entered a renaissance period due to novel intuitions from quantum information theory and to increasing attention on the dynamical aspects of single quantum systems. In the present contribution a simple but effective theoretical framework is introduced to clarify the connections between a purely mechanical description and the thermodynamic characterization of the equilibrium state of an isolated quantum system. A salient feature of our approach is the very transparent distinction between the statistical aspects and the dynamical aspects in the description of isolated quantum systems. Like in the classical statistical mechanics, the equilibrium distribution of any property is identified on the basis of the time evolution of the considered system. As a consequence equilibrium properties of quantum system appear to depend on the details of the initial state due to the abundance of constants of the motion in the Schrodinger dynamics. On the other hand the study of the probability distributions of some functions, such as the entropy or the equilibrium state of a subsystem, in statistical ensembles of pure states reveals the crucial role of typicality as the bridge between macroscopic thermodynamics and microscopic quantum dynamics. We shall consider two particular ensembles: the random pure state ensemble and the fixed expectation energy ensemble. The relation between the introduced ensembles, the properties of a given isolated system, and the standard quantum statistical description are discussed throughout the presentation. Finally we point out the conditions which should be satisfied by an ensemble in order to get meaningful thermodynamical characterization of an isolated quantum system.
Despite early developments on the foundations of quantum mechanics concern the wave function, quantum statistics has been developed with the density matrix formalism, leading to very important results in explaining molecular observations. Only recently, several authors argued a new interpretation by focusing on the wave function representing the quantum state of an isolated system, showing how a single wave function can exhibit statistical properties and generate the same results expected in the standard quantum statistical framework. Starting from these results, investigation on the foundations of quantum statistical mechanics has gained recently a renewed interest. As a matter of fact, the possibility of studying single molecule properties as well as the need of a better understanding of the effect of quantum dynamics, in order to develop new nanoscaled materials suitable to quantum computing tasks, have opened new intriguing questions leading to quantum statistical approaches far from being well understood and accepted. In this framework the behaviour of a single realization of quantum systems has gained a central role in the description of molecular systems. Furthermore, in recent years, an increasing number of studies has been presented on quantum dynamics through the numerical solution of the Schrödinger equation for systems of interacting components. These studies demonstrates that Quantum Dynamics Simulations could be a practicable route. In order to study phenomena such as dissipation, relaxation and thermalization, the focus has to be moved from isolated molecules to modular systems made of mutual interacting components, with model Hamiltonians possessing a sufficiently low dimensional representation. An important issue concerns the rules to be employed for the choice of the initial quantum state for the simulation of isolated systems. As long as one considers molecular degrees of freedom interacting with a (model) environment, there are no reasons to select a particular quantum state for the overall system and, therefore, a random choice has to be performed amongst a well defined statistical ensemble of pure states. Furthermore, one would like to operate a choice assuring that the simulation of the system is in a well defined thermal state with given temperature. This necessarily calls for a statistical description like for classical systems. A useful parametrization of the wave function will be presented in order to highlight the most appropriate variable for the statistical analysis. In particular some of them, called phases, retain all the dynamical information whereas the others, called populations, are the constants of motion. The latter, in particular are very important because they describe the equilibrium properties strictly related to the thermodynamic description. Since the dynamics of wave function does not supply any information about populations, the definition of a probability distribution on these variables is required. Different probability distributions on populations have been proposed, only on the bases of reasonable assumptions and they validation has been performed only with a posteriori considerations. In particular Fresch and Moro have demonstrated how the agreement with thermodynamics can be employed to discriminate different probability distributions on pure states. This had led the uniform ensembles to be, up to now, the most self-consistent models for quantum pure states. However, in this thesis I will highlight a drawback of the uniform distribution ensemble that can be described as follow: if we bring into contact two systems, even through a perturbative interaction, we are not able to describe the equilibrium properties after the interaction within the uniform distribution statistics, since the uniform character is lost. It represents a severe shortcoming of the statistical ensemble from a methodological point of view, since closed systems can be always considered as the result of interaction among previously isolated systems. On the other hand this drawback introduces a further requirement of a different nature that can be used for the definition of a new statistical ensemble. In this work I intend to find and characterize a statistical ensemble for populations that overcomes the drawbacks of the uniform distribution of pure states. The invariance of the thermal state in the coupling of identical systems will be used as a guideline in the definition af a new probability distribution on populations. Such an ensemble for pure states, called Thermalization Resilient Ensemble, provides a convenient framework for treating the interactions between quantum systems, as long as the structure of the statistical distribution is preserved and the identification of thermodynamic properties is assured. In perspective it should be the privileged statistical ensemble to implement Quantum Dynamics Simulations. Once the average properties of the Thermalization Resilient Ensemble have been introduced, I will obtain a probability distribution on pure states with the use of a geometrical analysis on the Hilbert space. The surface elements of an ellipsoidal manifold will be related to the probability density on populations. As a matter of fact the explicit form of the probability distribution is a prerequisite in order to perform Quantum Dynamical Simulations. However the results obtained through the geometrical analysis cannot be easily extended to systems with unbounded energy spectrum and an alternative strategy has been developed. A scaling algorithm on the basis of the uniform statistical ensemble will be described and this allows a well defined sampling of a probability distribution with desired averages. In this framework I demonstrate the emergence of thermodynamic behavior in the limit of macroscopic systems. In the last part of the thesis I consider the dynamical features of the thermalization experiment. Two identical systems, initially at different temperature, will be brought in interaction and the analysis of the final equilibrium state will be performed for two different generic forms of the interaction Hamiltonian, highlighting how the statistical approach can be very useful in the definition of the equilibrium in complex quantum systems.
We study an ensemble of quantum pure states, the thermalization resilient ensemble (TRE), providing the statistical characterization of the thermal equilibrium of isolated quantum systems. Following a previous work where the ensemble was defined based on the invariance of the average populations upon thermal contact of identical systems, here we introduce a general methodology to generate quantum states according to the TRE statistic. The sampling is employed to characterize the ensemble distribution of thermodynamic functions like the entropy, internal energy, and temperature. The possibility of defining the temperature also for isolated quantum systems with a limited number of degrees of freedom is a distinctive feature of the TRE statistic which has no counterpart in other quantum statistical ensembles. The results are illustrated by explicit calculations for spin model systems.
In this review, we discuss the decoherence and thermalization of a quantum spin system interacting with a spin bath environment, by numerically solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation of the whole system. The effects of the topologic structure and the initial state of the environment on the decoherence of the two-spin and many-spin system are discussed. The role of different spin-spin coupling is considered. We show under which conditions the environment drives the reduced density matrix of the system to a fully decoherent state, and how the diagonal elements of the reduced density matrix approach those expected for the system in the microcanonical or canonical ensemble, depending on the character of the additional integrals of motion. Our demonstration does not rely on time-averaging of observables nor does it assume that the coupling between system and bath is weak. Our findings show that the microcanonical distribution (in each eigenenergy subspace) and canonical ensemble are states that may result from pure quantum dynamics, suggesting that quantum mechanics may be regarded as the foundation of quantum statistical mechanics. Furthermore, our numerical results show that a fully decoherent quantum system prefers to stay in an equilibrium state with a maximum entropy, indicating the validity of the second law of thermodynamics in the decoherence process.