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arXiv:1609.03220 · Journal of Statistical Mechanics Theory and Experiment

Quasilocal charges and progress towards the complete GGE for field theories with nondiagonal scattering

Eric Vernier, Axel Cortés Cubero

Published Jan 31, 2017• 61 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1088/1742-5468/aa5288

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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.
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 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.
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.
We review recent progress in understanding the notion of locality in integrable quantum lattice systems. The central concept are the so-called quasilocal conserved quantities, which go beyond the standard perception of locality. Two systematic procedures to rigorously construct families of quasilocal conserved operators based on quantum transfer matrices are outlined, specializing on anisotropic Heisenberg XXZ spin-1/2 chain. Quasilocal conserved operators stem from two distinct classes of representations of the auxiliary space algebra, comprised of unitary (compact) representations, which can be naturally linked to the fusion algebra and quasiparticle content of the model, and non-unitary (non-compact) representations giving rise to charges, manifestly orthogonal to the unitary ones. Various condensed matter applications in which quasilocal conservation laws play an essential role are presented, with special emphasis on their implications for anomalous transport properties (finite Drude weight) and relaxation to non-thermal steady states in the quantum quench scenario.
We consider the construction of a generalized Gibbs ensemble composed of complete bases of conserved charges in the repulsive Lieb-Liniger model. We will show that it is possible to construct these bases with varying locality as well as demonstrating that such constructions are always possible provided one has in hand at least one complete basis set of charges. This procedure enables the construction of bases of charges that possess well-defined, finite expectation values given an arbitrary initial state. We demonstrate the use of these charges in the context of two different quantum quenches: a quench where the strength of the interactions in a one-dimensional gas is switched suddenly from zero to some finite value and the release of a one-dimensional cold atomic gas from a confining parabolic trap. While we focus on the Lieb-Liniger model in this paper, the principle of the construction of these charges applies to all integrable models, both in continuum and lattice form.
Integrable quantum systems evolving from non-equilibrium initial states do not thermalize to conventional Gibbs ensembles (GE). Instead, at long times they relax to generalized Gibbs ensembles (GGEs), which incorporate the full set of local and quasi-local conserved quantities. While GGEs have been extensively studied in the literature, a quantitative analytic characterization of how different they are from ordinary GEs is still lacking. In this work, we address this question by employing the concept of athermality, which we define within quantum resource theory as the relative entropy between a given state and the closest thermal state. By means of integrability techniques we compute the athermality for several quantum quenches in paradigmatic integrable models, including the free XY spin chain, the interacting Lieb-Liniger model, the XXZ spin chain, and the harmonic chain. We find that often the athermality becomes anomalously small when the post-quench Hamiltonian is critical in its ground state, despite probing physics at a finite energy density. We also prove that it systematically develops a singularity at criticality, which is inherited from the entropy of the GGE.