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arXiv:1604.05327 · Physical review. D/Physical review. D.

Remarks on thermalization in 2D CFT

Jan De Boer A, Dalit Engelhardt

Published Dec 30, 2016• 41 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We revisit certain aspects of thermalization in 2D conformal field theory (CFT). In particular, we consider similarities and differences between the time dependence of correlation functions in various states in rational and non-rational CFTs. We also consider the distinction between global and local thermalization and explain how states obtained by acting with a diffeomorphism on the ground state can appear locally thermal, and we review why the time-dependent expectation value of the energy-momentum tensor is generally a poor diagnostic of global thermalization. Since all 2D CFTs have an infinite set of commuting conserved charges, generic initial states might be expected to give rise to a generalized Gibbs ensemble rather than a pure thermal ensemble at late times. We construct the holographic dual of the generalized Gibbs ensemble and show that, to leading order, it is still described by a Banados-Teitelboim-Zanelli black hole. The extra conserved charges, while rendering $c<1$ theories essentially integrable, therefore seem to have little effect on large-$c$ conformal field theories.

DOI
10.1103/physrevd.94.126019

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We revisit certain aspects of thermalization in 2D conformal field theory (CFT). In particular, we consider similarities and differences between the time dependence of correlation functions in various states in rational and non-rational CFTs. We also consider the distinction between global and local thermalization and explain how states obtained by acting with a diffeomorphism on the ground state can appear locally thermal, and we review why the time-dependent expectation value of the energy-momentum tensor is generally a poor diagnostic of global thermalization. Since all 2D CFTs have an infinite set of commuting conserved charges, generic initial states might be expected to give rise to a generalized Gibbs ensemble rather than a pure thermal ensemble at late times. We construct the holographic dual of the generalized Gibbs ensemble and show that, to leading order, it is still described by a Banados-Teitelboim-Zanelli black hole. The extra conserved charges, while rendering c<1c<1c<1 theories essentially integrable, therefore seem to have little effect on large-ccc conformal field theories.
Infinite-dimensional conformal symmetry in two dimensions leads to integrability of 2D conformal field theories (CFTs) by giving rise to an infinite tower of local conserved quantum Korteweg-de Vries (qKdV) charges in involution. We discuss how the presence of conserved charges constrains equilibration in 2D CFTs. We propose that in the thermodynamic limit large central charge 2D CFTs satisfy generalized eigenstate thermalization, with the values of qKdV charges forming a complete set of thermodynamically relevant quantities, which unambiguously determine expectation values of all local observables from the vacuum family. Equivalence of ensembles further provides that local properties of an eigenstate can be described by the generalized Gibbs ensemble that includes only qKdV charges. In the case of a general initial state, upon equilibration, the emerging generalized Gibbs ensemble will necessarily include negative chemical potentials and holographically will be described by a quasiclassical black hole with quantum soft hair.
We study the long time behaviour of local observables following a quantum quench in 1+1 dimensional conformal field theories possessing additional conserved charges besides the energy. We show that the expectation value of an arbitrary string of local ob-servables supported on a finite interval exponentially approaches an equilibrium value. The equilibrium is characterized by a temperature and chemical potentials defined in terms of the quenched state. For an infinite number of commuting conserved charges, the equilibrium ensemble is a generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE). We compute the thermalization rate in a systematic perturbation in the chemical potentials, using a new technique to sum over an infinite number of Feynman diagrams. The above technique also allows us to compute relaxation times for thermal Green’s functions in the presence of an arbitrary number of chemical potentials. In the context of a higher spin (hs[λ]) holography, the partition function of the final equilibrium GGE is known to agree with that of a higher spin black hole. The thermalization rate from the CFT computed in our paper agrees with the quasinormal frequency of a scalar field in this black hole.
Abstract We identify typical high energy eigenstates in two-dimensional conformal field theories at finite c and establish that correlation functions of the stress tensor in such states are accurately thermal as defined by the standard canonical ensemble. Typical states of dimension h are shown to be typical level h/c descendants. In the AdS3/CFT2 correspondence, it is such states that should be compared to black holes in the bulk. We also discuss the discrepancy between thermal correlators and those computed in high energy primary states: the latter are reproduced instead by a generalized Gibbs ensemble with extreme values chosen for the chemical potentials conjugate to the KdV charges.
A bstract The Generalized Gibbs Ensemble (GGE) is relevant to understand the thermalization of quantum systems with an infinite set of conserved charges. In this work, we analyze the GGE partition function of 2D Conformal Field Theories (CFTs) with a U(1) charge and quantum Benjamin-Ono 2 (qBO 2 ) hierarchy charges. We use the Alday-Gaiotto-Tachikawa (AGT) correspondence to express the thermal trace in terms of the Alba-Fateev-Litvinov-Tarnopolskiy (AFLT) basis of descendants, which diagonalizes all charges. We analyze the GGE partition function in the thermodynamic semiclassical limit, including the first order quantum correction. We find that the equality between GGE averages and primary eigenvalues of the qBO 2 charges is attainable in the strict large c limit and potentially violated at the subleading 1 /c order. We also obtain the finite c partition function when only the first non-trivial charge is turned on, expressed in terms of partial theta functions. Our results should be relevant to the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis for charged CFTs, Warped CFTs and effective field theory descriptions of condensed matter systems.
We consider the entanglement entropy in 2d conformal field theory in a class of excited states produced by the insertion of a heavy local operator. These include both high-energy eigenstates of the Hamiltonian and time-dependent local quenches. We compute the universal contribution from the stress tensor to the single interval Renyi entropies and entanglement entropy, and conjecture that this dominates the answer in theories with a large central charge and a sparse spectrum of low-dimension operators. The resulting entanglement entropies agree precisely with holographic calculations in three-dimensional gravity. High-energy eigenstates are dual to microstates of the BTZ black hole, so the corresponding holographic calculation is a geodesic length in the black hole geometry; agreement between these two answers demonstrates that these individual microstates of holographic CFTs effectively thermalize at the level of the single-interval entanglement entropy. For local quenches, the dual geometry is a highly boosted black hole or conical defect. On the CFT side, the rise in entanglement entropy after a quench is directly related to the monodromy of a Virasoro conformal block.
Abstract The universal nature of black hole collapse in asymptotically AdS3 gravitational theories suggests that its holographic dual process, thermalization, should similarly be fixed by the universal features of 2d CFT with large central charge c. It is known that non-equilibrium states with scaling dimensions of order c can be sorted into states that eventually thermalize and those that fail to do so. By proving an equivalence between bounded Virasoro coadjoint orbits and certain (in)stability intervals of Hill’s equation it is shown that semi-classical CFTs possess a phase transition where a state that fails to thermalize can be promoted to a thermalizing state by preparing the system beforehand with an energy greater than an appropriate threshold energy. It is generally a difficult problem to ascertain whether a state will thermalize or not. As partial progress to this problem a set of lower bounds are presented for the threshold energy, which can alternatively be interpreted as criteria for thermalization.