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arXiv:1204.3036 · Physical Review A

Thermalization of local observables in small Hubbard lattices

Sam Genway, A. F. Ho, Derek K. K. Lee

Published Aug 9, 2012• 49 citations
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Abstract

We present a study of thermalization of a small isolated Hubbard lattice cluster prepared in a pure state with a well-defined energy. We examine how a two-site subsystem of the lattice thermalizes with the rest of the system as its environment. We explore numerically the existence of thermalization over a range of system parameters, such as the interaction strength, system size, and the strength of the coupling between the subsystem and the rest of the lattice. We find thermalization over a wide range of parameters and that interactions are crucial for efficient thermalization of small systems. We relate this thermalization behavior to the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis and quantify numerically the extent to which eigenstate thermalization holds. We also verify our numerical results theoretically with the help of previously established results from random matrix theory for the local density of states, particularly the finite-size scaling for the onset of thermalization.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.86.023609

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We present a study of thermalization of a small isolated Hubbard lattice cluster prepared in a pure state with a well-defined energy. We examine how a two-site subsystem of the lattice thermalizes with the rest of the system as its environment. We explore numerically the existence of thermalization over a range of system parameters, such as the interaction strength, system size, and the strength of the coupling between the subsystem and the rest of the lattice. We find thermalization over a wide range of parameters and that interactions are crucial for efficient thermalization of small systems. We relate this thermalization behavior to the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis and quantify numerically the extent to which eigenstate thermalization holds. We also verify our numerical results theoretically with the help of previously established results from random matrix theory for the local density of states, particularly the finite-size scaling for the onset of thermalization.
We study numerically the thermalization and temporal evolution of a two-site subsystem of a fermionic Hubbard model prepared far from equilibrium at a definite energy. Even for very small systems near quantum degeneracy, the subsystem can reach a steady state resembling equilibrium. This occurs for a nonperturbative coupling between the subsystem and the rest of the lattice where relaxation to equilibrium is Gaussian in time, in sharp contrast to perturbative results. We find similar results for random couplings, suggesting such behavior is generic for small systems.
This thesis approaches questions concerning the thermalisation of subsystems of closed quantum systems, prepared in pure states of definite energy but far from equilibrium, under exact unitary evolution. Taking motivation from experiments in the field of ultracold atoms, an extensive study of relaxation to a thermal state in the Hubbard model is presented. The study of small local subsystems in Hubbard-model lattice clusters has led to some interesting findings. Explored are the effects of interactions between fermions, the initial-state energy and the energy uncertainty in the initial state and their effects on relaxation dynamics and thermalisation. The most significant finding is that while subsystem thermalisation is seen for a large range of subsystem-bath coupling strengths, the temporal form of the relaxation varies markedly from exponential decay for weak couplings with a crossover to Gaussian behaviour with increased coupling strength. This is found to hold more generally for random couplings between the subsystem and bath and for bosons as well as fermions, thus demonstrating generality. As well as being demonstrated numerically, this behaviour is derived for a generic class of bi-partite quantum systems which may be described with the use of random matrices. A Brownian motion model is employed to show the exponential to Gaussian crossover when the subsystem-bath coupling matrix takes a banded form. This result agrees well with numerical Hubbard-model results, and yields identical results at short times to those from straight-forward perturbative methods. It is demonstrated that the non-Markovian Gaussian behaviour should also be observable in the limit of macroscopic baths.
Understanding the evolution towards thermal equilibrium of an isolated quantum system is at the foundation of statistical mechanics and a subject of interest in such diverse areas as cold atom physics or the quantum mechanics of black holes. Since a pure state can never evolve into a thermal density matrix, the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH) has been put forward by Deutsch and Srednicki as a way to explain this apparent thermalization, similarly to what the ergodic theorem does in classical mechanics. In this paper this hypothesis is tested numerically. First, it is observed that thermalization happens in a subspace of states (the Krylov subspace) with dimension much smaller than that of the total Hilbert space. We check numerically the validity of ETH in such a subspace, for a system of hard core bosons on a two-dimensional lattice. We then discuss how well the eigenstates of the Hamiltonian projected on the Krylov subspace represent the true eigenstates. This discussion is aided by bringing the projected Hamiltonian to the tridiagonal form and interpreting it as an Anderson localization problem for a finite one-dimensional chain. We also consider thermalization of a subsystem and argue that generation of a large entanglement entropy can lead to a thermal density matrix for the subsystem well before the whole system thermalizes. Finally, we comment on possible implications of ETH in quantum gravity.
According to the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH), the eigenstate-to-eigenstate fluctuations of expectation values of local observables should decrease with increasing system size. In approaching the thermodynamic limit-the number of sites and the particle number increasing at the same rate-the fluctuations should scale as ∼D^{-1/2} with the Hilbert space dimension D. Here, we study a different limit-the classical or semiclassical limit-by increasing the particle number in fixed lattice topologies. We focus on the paradigmatic Bose-Hubbard system, which is quantum-chaotic for large lattices and shows mixed behavior for small lattices. We derive expressions for the expected scaling, assuming ideal eigenstates having Gaussian-distributed random components. We show numerically that, for larger lattices, ETH scaling of physical midspectrum eigenstates follows the ideal (Gaussian) expectation, but for smaller lattices, the scaling occurs via a different exponent. We examine several plausible mechanisms for this anomalous scaling.
We verify that the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) holds universally for locally interacting quantum many-body systems. Introducing random matrix ensembles with interactions, we numerically obtain a distribution of maximum fluctuations of eigenstate expectation values for different realizations of interactions. This distribution, which cannot be obtained from the conventional random matrix theory involving nonlocal correlations, demonstrates that an overwhelming majority of pairs of local Hamiltonians and observables satisfy the ETH with exponentially small fluctuations. The ergodicity of our random matrix ensembles breaks down because of locality.
In an isolated quantum many-body system undergoing unitary evolution, we study the thermalization of a subsystem, treating the rest of the system as a bath. In this setting, the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) was proposed to explain thermalization. Consider a nearly integrable Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model obtained by adding random all-to-all 4-body interactions as a perturbation to a random free-fermion model. When the subsystem size is larger than the square root of but is still a vanishing fraction of the system size, we prove thermalization if the system is initialized in a random product state, while almost all eigenstates violate the ETH. In this sense, the ETH is not a necessary condition for thermalization.