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arXiv:1411.5352 · Physical Review A

Generalized Gibbs ensembles for quantum field theories

Fabian H. L. Eßler, Giuseppe Mussardo, Miłosz Panfil

Published May 14, 2015• 166 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We consider the nonequilibrium dynamics in quantum field theories (QFTs). After being prepared in a density matrix that is not an eigenstate of the Hamiltonian, such systems are expected to relax locally to a stationary state. In the presence of local conservation laws, these stationary states are believed to be described by appropriate generalized Gibbs ensembles. Here we demonstrate that in order to obtain a correct description of the stationary state, it is necessary to take into account conservation laws that are not (ultra)local in the usual sense of QFTs, but fulfill a significantly weaker form of locality. We discuss the implications of our results for integrable QFTs in one spatial dimension.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.91.051602

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We consider the nonequilibrium dynamics in quantum field theories (QFTs). After being prepared in a density matrix that is not an eigenstate of the Hamiltonian, such systems are expected to relax locally to a stationary state. In the presence of local conservation laws, these stationary states are believed to be described by appropriate generalized Gibbs ensembles. Here we demonstrate that in order to obtain a correct description of the stationary state, it is necessary to take into account conservation laws that are not (ultra)local in the usual sense of QFTs, but fulfill a significantly weaker form of locality. We discuss the implications of our results for integrable QFTs in one spatial dimension.
We consider the time evolution following a quantum quench in spin-1/2 chains. It is well known that local conservation laws constrain the dynamics and, eventually, the stationary behavior of local observables. We show that some widely studied models, such as the quantum XY model, possess extra families of local conservation laws in addition to the translation invariant ones. As a consequence, the additional charges must be included in the generalized Gibbs ensemble that describes the stationary properties. The effects go well beyond a simple redefinition of the stationary state. The time evolution of a non-translation-invariant state under a (translation-invariant) Hamiltonian with a perturbation that weakly breaks the hidden symmetries underlying the extra conservation laws exhibits pre-relaxation. In addition, in the limit of small perturbation, the time evolution following pre-relaxation can be described by means of a time-dependent generalized Gibbs ensemble.
The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis conjectures that for a thermodynamically large system in one of its energy eigenstates, the reduced density matrix describing any finite subsystem is determined solely by a set of relevant conserved quantities. In a chaotic quantum system, only the energy is expected to play that role and hence eigenstates appear locally thermal. Integrable systems, on the other hand, possess an extensive number of such conserved quantities and therefore the reduced density matrix requires specification of all the corresponding parameters (generalized Gibbs ensemble). However, here we show by unbiased statistical sampling of the individual eigenstates with a given finite energy density that the local description of an overwhelming majority of these states of even such an integrable system is actually Gibbs-like, i.e., requires only the energy density of the eigenstate. Rare eigenstates that cannot be represented by the Gibbs ensemble can also be sampled efficiently by our method and their local properties are then shown to be described by appropriately truncated generalized Gibbs ensembles. We further show that the presence of these rare eigenstates differentiates the model from the chaotic case and leads to the system being described by a generalized Gibbs ensemble at long time under a unitary dynamics following a sudden quench, even when the initial state is a typical (Gibbs-like) eigenstate of the prequench Hamiltonian.
Integrable quantum many-body systems are considered to equilibrate to generalized Gibbs ensembles (GGEs). A general mechanism of such relaxation to GGE has been shown for unitary evolutions of exactly solvable quadratic bosonic systems in the thermodynamic limit. Here, we explore the role of locality and interaction with surroundings in the relaxation by considering the reduced dynamics of a class of open systems weakly interacting with a reservoir, which is initially prepared in a locally perturbed GGE. The standard derivation of a quantum master equation fails to describe relaxation to GGE in the long-time limit in the presence of the initial perturbation. We investigate a proper quantum master equation that guarantees the relaxation to GGE to avoid this counterintuitive issue and describes the relaxation to the reduced state corresponding to GGE in the thermodynamic limit. In particular, we show that the stationary state of the open system is fully characterized by GGE of the reservoir, which is independent of the initial local perturbation.
We consider the time evolution following a quantum quench in spin-1/2 chains. It is well known that local conservation laws constrain the dynamics and, eventually, the stationary behavior of local observables. We show that some widely studied models, like the quantum XY model, possess extra families of local conservation laws in addition to the translation invariant ones. As a consequence, the additional charges must be included in the generalized Gibbs ensemble that describes the stationary properties. The effects go well beyond a simple redefinition of the stationary state. The time evolution of a non-translation invariant state under a (translation invariant) Hamiltonian with a perturbation that weakly breaks the hidden symmetries underlying the extra conservation laws exhibits pre-relaxation. In addition, in the limit of small perturbation, the time evolution following pre-relaxation can be described by means of a time-dependent generalized Gibbs ensemble.
Abstract We study the quench dynamics in continuous relativistic quantum field theory, more specifically the locality properties of the large time stationary state. After a quantum quench in a one-dimensional integrable model, the expectation values of local observables are expected to relax to a generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE), constructed out of the conserved charges of the model. Quenching to a free bosonic theory, it has been shown that the system indeed relaxes to a GGE described by the momentum mode occupation numbers. We first address the question whether the latter can be written directly in terms of local charges and we find that, in contrast to the lattice case, this is not possible in continuous field theories. We then investigate the less stringent requirement of the existence of a sequence of truncated local GGEs that converges to the correct steady state, in the sense of the expectation values of the local observables. While we show that such a sequence indeed exists, in order to unequivocally determine the so-defined GGE, we find that information about the expectation value of the recently discovered quasi-local charges is in the end necessary, the latter being the suitable generalization of the local charges while passing from the lattice to the continuum. Lastly, we study the locality properties of the GGE and show that the latter is completely determined by the knowledge of the expectation value of a countable set of suitably defined quasi-local charges.
The integrable system is constrained strictly by the conservation law during the time evolution, and the prethermal state from the nearly integrable system is also constrained by the conserved parameters (the constants of motion) with the corresponding generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE), which is indubitably a powerful tool in the prediction of the relaxation dynamics. For stochastic evolution dynamics with considerable noise, the two-point correlation of local operators (like the density of kinks or transverse magnetization correlators), which do not exhibit the thermal features, display the behaviors of nonthermalization and an asymptotic GGE. In fact it is an asymptotic quasi-steady state with an infinite temperature, therefore the required distance to the nonthermal steady state is in an infinite time average. In this paper, we unambiguously investigate the relaxation of a nonequilibrium system in a canonical ensemble for integrable and nonintegrable systems. Temporal behavior of the many-body quantum system and the corresponding linear-coupling between the harmonic oscillators are discussed. The matrix-method in entropy ensemble is utilized to discuss the boundary and the diagonalization algebraically. The approximation results for nonintegrable system under the considerable perturbations are also presented.