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arXiv:1507.02993 · Physical Review Letters

Complete Generalized Gibbs Ensembles in an Interacting Theory

Enej Ilievski, Jacopo De Nardis, Bram Wouters, Jean-Sébastien Caux, Fabian H. L. Eßler, Tomaž Prosen

Published Oct 7, 2015• 491 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In integrable many-particle systems, it is widely believed that the stationary state reached at late times after a quantum quench can be described by a generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE) constructed from their extensive number of conserved charges. A crucial issue is then to identify a complete set of these charges, enabling the GGE to provide exact steady-state predictions. Here we solve this long-standing problem for the case of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain by explicitly constructing a GGE which uniquely fixes the macrostate describing the stationary behavior after a general quantum quench. A crucial ingredient in our method, which readily generalizes to other integrable models, are recently discovered quasilocal charges. As a test, we reproduce the exact postquench steady state of the Néel quench problem obtained previously by means of the Quench Action method.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.115.157201

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In integrable many-particle systems, it is widely believed that the stationary state reached at late times after a quantum quench can be described by a generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE) constructed from their extensive number of conserved charges. A crucial issue is then to identify a complete set of these charges, enabling the GGE to provide exact steady-state predictions. Here we solve this long-standing problem for the case of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain by explicitly constructing a GGE which uniquely fixes the macrostate describing the stationary behavior after a general quantum quench. A crucial ingredient in our method, which readily generalizes to other integrable models, are recently discovered quasilocal charges. As a test, we reproduce the exact postquench steady state of the Néel quench problem obtained previously by means of the Quench Action method.
Abstract We revisit the question of whether and how the steady states arising after non-equilibrium time evolution in integrable models (and in particular in the XXZ spin chain) can be described by the so-called generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE). Whereas it is known that the micro-canonical ensemble built on a complete set of charges correctly describes the long-time limit of local observables, it has been shown recently by Ilievski et al that the corresponding canonical ensemble is not well defined, and instead a different canonical ensemble was proposed in terms of particle occupation number operators. Here we provide an alternative construction by considering truncated GGEs (tGGEs) that include only a finite number of local and quasi-local conserved operators. It is shown that the tGGEs can approximate the steady states with arbitrary precision, i.e. all physical observables are exactly reproduced in the infinite truncation limit. We trace back the problems encountered in defining an untruncated GGE to the dependence of the associated Lagrange multipliers on the truncation index. Conversely, we show that this problem may be circumvented by considering a new set of (quasi)local charges which are linear combinations of the standard ones, and whose associated Lagrange multipliers are well-defined state functions. Our general arguments are applied to concrete quench situations in the XXZ chain, where the initial states are simple two-site or four-site product states. Depending on the quench we find that numerical results for the local correlators can be obtained with remarkable precision using truncated GGEs with only 10–100 charges.
Abstract It has recently been shown that some integrable spin chains possess a set of quasilocal conserved charges, with the classic example being the spin- 1 2 XXZ Heisenberg chain. These charges have been proven to be essential in order to properly describe stationary states after a quantum quench, and must be included in the generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE). We find that similar charges are also necessary for the GGE description of integrable quantum field theories with nondiagonal scattering. A stationary state in a nondiagonal scattering theory is completely specified by fixing the mode-occupation density distributions of physical particles, as well auxiliary particles which carry no energy or momentum. We show that the set of conserved charges with integer Lorentz spin, related to the integrability of the model, is unable to fix the distributions of these auxiliary particles, since these charges can only fix the kinematical properties of physical particles. The field theory analogs of the quasilocal lattice charges are therefore necessary. As a concrete example, we find the complete set of charges needed in the sine-Gordon model, by using the fact that this field theory is recovered as the continuum limit of a spatially inhomogeneous version of the XXZ chain. The set of quasilocal charges of the lattice theory is shown to become a set of local charges with fractional spin in the field theory.
We study quantum quenches in the XXZ spin-1/21/21/2 Heisenberg chain from families of ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic initial states. Using Bethe ansatz techniques, we compute short-range correlators in the complete generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE), which takes into account all local and quasilocal conservation laws. We compare our results to exact diagonalization and numerical linked cluster expansion calculations for the diagonal ensemble, finding excellent agreement and thus providing a very accurate test for the validity of the complete GGE. Furthermore, we use exact diagonalization to compute the diagonal entropy in the postquench steady state. We show that the Yang-Yang entropy for the complete GGE is consistent with twice the value of the diagonal entropy in the largest chains or the extrapolated result in the thermodynamic limit. Finally, the complete GGE is quantitatively contrasted with the GGE built using only the local conserved charges (local GGE). The predictions of the two ensembles are found to differ significantly in the case of ferromagnetic initial states. Such initial states are better suited than others considered in the literature to experimentally test the validity of the complete GGE and contrast it to the failure of the local GGE.
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.
We study quenches in integrable spin-1/2 chains in which we evolve the ground state of the antiferromagnetic Ising model with the anisotropic Heisenberg Hamiltonian. For this nontrivially interacting situation, an application of the first-principles-based quench-action method allows us to give an exact description of the postquench steady state in the thermodynamic limit. We show that a generalized Gibbs ensemble, implemented using all known local conserved charges, fails to reproduce the exact quench-action steady state and to correctly predict postquench equilibrium expectation values of physical observables. This is supported by numerical linked-cluster calculations within the diagonal ensemble in the thermodynamic limit.
What is the long-time behavior of a quantum system after it is brought out of equilibrium? In a generic case, it has been proposed that an effective thermalization occurs, and the local properties of the system can then be described by a thermal Gibbs ensemble. However, in integrable systems, with infinitely many conservation laws, the answer is far more complicated. It was shown in several special cases that the long-time steady state can be exactly described by the so called complete generalized Gibbs ensemble. The latter can be obtained by maximizing the entropy with constraints imposed by the conservation of energy, but also by additional carefully chosen subset of the integrals of motion. In this work, the authors analyze more general initial states, focusing on integrable XXZ Heisenberg spin chains. They find that the complete generalized Gibbs ensemble indeed correctly describes the system at long times after the quench.