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arXiv:1705.07014 · Physical Review Letters

Typical Relaxation of Isolated Many-Body Systems Which Do Not Thermalize

Ben N. Balz, Peter Reimann

Published May 12, 2017• 23 citations
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Abstract

We consider isolated many-body quantum systems which do not thermalize; i.e., expectation values approach an (approximately) steady longtime limit which disagrees with the microcanonical prediction of equilibrium statistical mechanics. A general analytical theory is worked out for the typical temporal relaxation behavior in such cases. The main prerequisites are initial conditions which appreciably populate many energy levels and do not give rise to significant spatial inhomogeneities on macroscopic scales. The theory explains very well the experimental and numerical findings in a trapped-ion quantum simulator exhibiting many-body localization, in ultracold atomic gases, and in integrable hard-core boson and XXZ models.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.118.190601

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We consider isolated many-body quantum systems which do not thermalize; i.e., expectation values approach an (approximately) steady longtime limit which disagrees with the microcanonical prediction of equilibrium statistical mechanics. A general analytical theory is worked out for the typical temporal relaxation behavior in such cases. The main prerequisites are initial conditions which appreciably populate many energy levels and do not give rise to significant spatial inhomogeneities on macroscopic scales. The theory explains very well the experimental and numerical findings in a trapped-ion quantum simulator exhibiting many-body localization, in ultracold atomic gases, and in integrable hard-core boson and XXZ models.
An analytical prediction is established of how an isolated many-body quantum system relaxes towards its thermal longtime limit under the action of a time-independent perturbation, but still remaining sufficiently close to a reference case whose temporal relaxation is known. This is achieved within the conceptual framework of a typicality approach by showing and exploiting that the time-dependent expectation values behave very similarly for most members of a suitably chosen ensemble of perturbations. The predictions are validated by comparison with various numerical and experimental results from the literature.
A general analytical theory of temporal relaxation processes in isolated quantum systems with many degrees of freedom is elaborated, which unifies and substantially amends several previous approximations. Specifically, the Fourier transform of the initial energy distribution is found to play a key role, which is furthermore equivalent to the so-called survival probability in case of a pure initial state. The main prerequisite is the absence of any notable transport currents, caused for instance by some initially unbalanced local densities of particles, energy, and so on. In particular, such a transportless relaxation scenario naturally arises when both the system Hamiltonian and the initial non-equilibrium state do not exhibit any spatial inhomogeneities on macroscopic scales. A further requirement is that the relaxation must not be notably influenced by any approximate (but not exact) constant of motion or metastable state. The theoretical predictions are compared with various experimental and numerical results from the literature.
A quantum mechanical explanation of the relaxation to equilibrium is shown for macroscopic systems for nonintegrable cases and numerically verified. The macroscopic system is initially in an equilibrium state, subsequently externally perturbed during a finite time, and then isolated for a sufficiently long time. We show a quantitative explanation that the initial microcanonical state typically reaches a state whose expectation values are well approximated by the average over another microcanonical ensemble.
A general analytical theory of temporal relaxation processes in isolated quantum systems with many degrees of freedom is elaborated, which unifies and substantially amends several previous approximations. Specifically, the Fourier transform of the initial energy distribution is found to play a key role, which is furthermore equivalent to the so-called survival probability in case of a pure initial state. The main prerequisite is the absence of any notable transport currents, caused for instance by some initially unbalanced local densities of particles, energy, and so on. In particular, such a transportless relaxation scenario naturally arises when both the system Hamiltonian and the initial non-equilibrium state do not exhibit any spatial inhomogeneities on macroscopic scales. A further requirement is that the relaxation must not be notably influenced by any approximate (but not exact) constant of motion or metastable state. The theoretical predictions are compared with various experimental and numerical results from the literature.
Despite being ubiquitous, out-of-equilibrium quantum systems are much less understood than systems at equilibrium. Progress in the field has benefited from a symbiotic relationship between theoretical studies and new experiments on coherent dynamics. The present work strengthens this connection by providing a general picture of the relaxation process of isolated lattice many-body quantum systems that are routinely studied in experiments with cold atoms, ions traps, and nuclear magnetic resonance. We show numerically and analytically that the long-time decay of the probability for finding the system in its initial state necessarily shows a power-law behavior $\ensuremath{\propto}{t}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\gamma}}$. This happens independently of the details of the system, such as integrability, level repulsion, and the presence or absence of disorder. Information about the spectrum, the structure of the initial state, and the number of particles that interact simultaneously is contained in the value of $\ensuremath{\gamma}$. From it, we can anticipate whether the initial state will or will not thermalize.
The lack of knowledge about the detailed many-particle motion on the microscopic scale is a key issue in any theoretical description of a macroscopic experiment. For systems at or close to thermal equilibrium, statistical mechanics provides a very successful general framework to cope with this problem. However, far from equilibrium, only very few quantitative and comparably universal results are known. Here a quantum mechanical prediction of this type is derived and verified against various experimental and numerical data from the literature. It quantitatively describes the entire temporal relaxation towards thermal equilibrium for a large class (in a mathematically precisely defined sense) of closed many-body systems, whose initial state may be arbitrarily far from equilibrium.