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arXiv:1611.02046 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Total correlations of the diagonal ensemble as a generic indicator for ergodicity breaking in quantum systems

Francesca Pietracaprina, Christian Gogolin, John Goold

Published Mar 14, 2017• 14 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The diagonal ensemble is the infinite time average of a quantum state following unitary dynamics in systems without degeneracies. In analogy to the time average of a classical phase-space dynamics, it is intimately related to the ergodic properties of the quantum system giving information on the spreading of the initial state in the eigenstates of the Hamiltonian. In this work we apply a concept from quantum information, known as total correlations, to the diagonal ensemble. Forming an upper bound on the multipartite entanglement, it quantifies the combination of both classical and quantum correlations in a mixed state. We generalize the total correlations of the diagonal ensemble to more general $\ensuremath{\alpha}$-Renyi entropies and focus on the cases $\ensuremath{\alpha}=1$ and $\ensuremath{\alpha}=2$ with further numerical extensions in mind. Here we show that the total correlations of the diagonal ensemble is a generic indicator of ergodicity breaking, displaying a subextensive behavior when the system is ergodic. We demonstrate this by investigating its scaling in a range of spin chain models focusing not only on the cases of integrability breaking but also emphasize its role in understanding the transition from an ergodic to a many-body localized phase in systems with disorder or quasiperiodicity.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.95.125118

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The diagonal ensemble is the infinite time average of a quantum state following unitary dynamics in systems without degeneracies. In analogy to the time average of a classical phase-space dynamics, it is intimately related to the ergodic properties of the quantum system giving information on the spreading of the initial state in the eigenstates of the Hamiltonian. In this work we apply a concept from quantum information, known as total correlations, to the diagonal ensemble. Forming an upper bound on the multipartite entanglement, it quantifies the combination of both classical and quantum correlations in a mixed state. We generalize the total correlations of the diagonal ensemble to more general \ensuremathα\ensuremath{\alpha}\ensuremathα-Renyi entropies and focus on the cases \ensuremathα=1\ensuremath{\alpha}=1\ensuremathα=1 and \ensuremathα=2\ensuremath{\alpha}=2\ensuremathα=2 with further numerical extensions in mind. Here we show that the total correlations of the diagonal ensemble is a generic indicator of ergodicity breaking, displaying a subextensive behavior when the system is ergodic. We demonstrate this by investigating its scaling in a range of spin chain models focusing not only on the cases of integrability breaking but also emphasize its role in understanding the transition from an ergodic to a many-body localized phase in systems with disorder or quasiperiodicity.
The intriguing phenomenon of many-body localization (MBL) has attracted significant interest recently, but a complete characterization is still lacking. In this work we introduce the total correlations, a concept from quantum information theory capturing multipartite correlations, to the study of this phenomenon. We demonstrate that the total correlations of the diagonal ensemble provides a meaningful diagnostic tool to pin-down, probe, and better understand the MBL transition and ergodicity breaking in quantum systems. In particular, we show that the total correlations has sublinear dependence on the system size in delocalized, ergodic phases, whereas we find that it scales extensively in the localized phase developing a pronounced peak at the transition. We exemplify the power of our approach by means of an exact diagonalization study of a Heisenberg spin chain in a disordered field. By a finite size scaling analysis of the peak position and crossover point from log to linear scaling we collect evidence that ergodicity is broken before the MBL transition in this model.
We study disorder-induced ergodicity breaking transition in high-energy eigenstates of interacting spin-1/2 chains. Using exact diagonalization, we introduce a cost function approach to quantitatively compare different scenarios for the eigenstate transition. We study ergodicity indicators such as the eigenstate entanglement entropy and the spectral level spacing ratio, and we consistently find that an (infinite-order) Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition yields a lower cost function when compared to a finite-order transition. Interestingly, we observe that the ergodicity breaking transition in systems studied by exact diagonalization (with around 20 lattice sites) takes place at disorder values lower than those reported in previous works. As a consequence, the crossing point in finite systems exhibits nearly thermal properties, i.e., ergodicity indicators at the transition are close to the random matrix theory predictions.
Characterizing states of matter through the lens of their ergodic properties is a fascinating new direction of research. In the quantum realm, the many-body localization (MBL) was proposed to be the paradigmatic ergodicity breaking phenomenon, which extends the concept of Anderson localization to interacting systems. At the same time, random matrix theory has established a powerful framework for characterizing the onset of quantum chaos and ergodicity (or the absence thereof) in quantum many-body systems. Here we numerically study the spectral statistics of disordered interacting spin chains, which represent prototype models expected to exhibit MBL. We study the ergodicity indicator g=log_{10}(t_{H}/t_{Th}), which is defined through the ratio of two characteristic many-body time scales, the Thouless time t_{Th} and the Heisenberg time t_{H}, and hence resembles the logarithm of the dimensionless conductance introduced in the context of Anderson localization. We argue that the ergodicity breaking transition in interacting spin chains occurs when both time scales are of the same order, t_{Th}≈t_{H}, and g becomes a system-size independent constant. Hence, the ergodicity breaking transition in many-body systems carries certain analogies with the Anderson localization transition. Intriguingly, using a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless correlation length we observe a scaling solution of g across the transition, which allows for detection of the crossing point in finite systems. We discuss the observation that scaled results in finite systems by increasing the system size exhibit a flow towards the quantum chaotic regime.
We study quantum dynamics through the lens of entanglement generation and characterize the underlying unitary evolution by the distinct signatures it imprints on the time-dependent entangling power. For a unitary operator, we characterize ergodicity by the equality between its long-time-averaged entangling power and the Haar-averaged linear entropy. We define mixing more stringently as the convergence of the time-dependent entangling power itself to the Haar value at long times. Within this framework, we establish the ergodic hierarchy of dynamical behavior, showing in particular that mixing implies ergodicity, whereas ergodicity does not necessarily imply mixing. As an application, we find that two-qubit unitary gates are neither ergodic nor mixing: their long-time-averaged entangling power can take only four discrete values, none of which coincides with the Haar average. We then investigate many-body dynamics using the kicked Ising chain and find that the long-time-averaged entangling power converges to the Haar value in both integrable and nonintegrable cases, indicating ergodicity. Remarkably, however, the nonintegrable chain exhibits mixing, whereas the integrable chain, despite being ergodic, is demonstrably nonmixing. We also introduce a Lyapunov-like exponent to characterize the rate at which the time-dependent entangling power approaches its saturation value. We find that this exponent increases systematically with the degree of integrability breaking in the many-body system. Our results establish entanglement generation as a useful framework for characterizing dynamical systems and reveal qualitatively different signatures of integrability beyond conventional diagnostics.
Does thermal averaging preserve signatures of eigenstate complexity? We study the entropic complexity C = S_1 - S_2 (Shannon minus second-order Renyi entropy) across the ergodic-to-localized crossover of three disordered models: the Rosenzweig-Porter (RP) ensemble, the power-law banded random matrix (PLBRM) ensemble, and the random-field Heisenberg chain. We compare a wavefunction-level quantity C_eig to the complexity of the thermal (Gibbs) state before and after pointer-basis dephasing, via the trace (C_tr) and diagonal (C_diag) complexities. The answer is mostly no: thermal averaging strongly suppresses, but does not eliminate, eigenstate-complexity signatures. C_eig develops a pronounced mid-phase maximum in RP and, at matching fractal dimension, in the structurally independent PLBRM model; a high-statistics scan resolves a weak (about 10%) but reproducible thermal shadow of this peak in the thermal diagonal complexity. This feature is confined to the two random-matrix models; in the Heisenberg chain the eigenstate complexity instead peaks at the many-body localization transition. A second, genuinely thermal feature, an edge just inside the ergodic phase, has no eigenstate counterpart and, in PLBRM, recedes with system size. Both features are tracked by scale-invariant crossover indicators: the log-ratio of the trace and diagonal crossover temperatures, which vanishes upon localization, and the relative entropy of coherence. Entropic complexity thus cleanly separates thermal-state and eigenstate physics: a sharp wavefunction-level feature, reproducible across unrelated random-matrix constructions, leaves only a faint, structurally distinct imprint on thermal observables.
The Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis explains thermalization in isolated quantum systems through the statistical properties of observables in the energy eigenbasis. We investigate the crossover from integrability to chaos in the spin-1/21/21/2 XXZ chain, establishing a direct correspondence between the spectral correlations of the Hamiltonian and local observables expressed in the energy eigenbasis as a signature of ergodicity breaking. By introducing a local perturbation that drives the system from integrability to chaos, we track the standard ETH indicators and the eigenstate entanglement entropy. We introduce a submatrix-based framework for analyzing local observables in the energy eigenbasis. By extracting real-symmetric blocks along the diagonal of the local observables represented in eigenbasis, we show that these submatrices exhibit both the short-range and long-range spectral features of the Hamiltonian. Remarkably, this correspondence persists even in a partially ergodic regime, indicating that the emergence of chaos is already encoded locally within the observables' matrix structure and that small blocks are sufficient to capture the underlying spectral correlations.