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arXiv:1710.11433 · Physical review. E

Statistical properties of eigenstate amplitudes in complex quantum systems

Wouter Beugeling, Arnd Bäcker, Roderich Moessner, Masudul Haque

Published Aug 7, 2018• 49 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We study the eigenstates of quantum systems with large Hilbert spaces, via their distribution of wave-function amplitudes in a real-space basis. For single-particle "quantum billiards," these real-space amplitudes are known to have Gaussian distribution for chaotic systems. In this work, we formulate and address the corresponding question for many-body lattice quantum systems. For integrable many-body systems, we examine the deviation from Gaussianity and provide evidence that the distribution generically tends toward power-law behavior in the limit of large sizes. We relate the deviation from Gaussianity to the entanglement content of many-body eigenstates. For integrable billiards, we find several cases where the distribution has power-law tails.

DOI
10.1103/physreve.98.022204

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We study the eigenstates of quantum systems with large Hilbert spaces, via their distribution of wave-function amplitudes in a real-space basis. For single-particle "quantum billiards," these real-space amplitudes are known to have Gaussian distribution for chaotic systems. In this work, we formulate and address the corresponding question for many-body lattice quantum systems. For integrable many-body systems, we examine the deviation from Gaussianity and provide evidence that the distribution generically tends toward power-law behavior in the limit of large sizes. We relate the deviation from Gaussianity to the entanglement content of many-body eigenstates. For integrable billiards, we find several cases where the distribution has power-law tails.
We study the bipartite von Neumann entanglement entropy and matrix elements of local operators in the eigenstates of an interacting integrable Hamiltonian (the paradigmatic spin-1/2 XXZ chain), and we contrast their behavior with that of quantum chaotic systems. We find that the leading term of the average (over all eigenstates in the zero magnetization sector) eigenstate entanglement entropy has a volume-law coefficient that is smaller than the universal (maximal entanglement) one in quantum chaotic systems. This establishes the entanglement entropy as a powerful measure to distinguish integrable models from generic ones. Remarkably, our numerical results suggest that the volume-law coefficient of the average entanglement entropy of eigenstates of the spin-1/2 XXZ Hamiltonian is very close to, or the same as, the one for translationally invariant quadratic fermionic models. We also study matrix elements of local operators in the eigenstates of the spin-1/2 XXZ Hamiltonian at the center of the spectrum. For the diagonal matrix elements, we show evidence that the support does not vanish with increasing system size, while the average eigenstate-to-eigenstate fluctuations vanish in a power-law fashion. For the off-diagonal matrix elements, we show that they follow a distribution that is close to (but not quite) log-normal, and that their variance is a well-defined function of ω=E_{α}-E_{β} ({E_{α}} are the eigenenergies) proportional to 1/D, where D is the Hilbert space dimension.
In quantum statistical mechanics, it is of fundamental interest to understand how close the bipartite entanglement entropy of eigenstates of quantum chaotic Hamiltonians is to maximal. For random pure states in the Hilbert space, the average entanglement entropy is known to be nearly maximal, with a deviation that is, at most, a constant. Here we prove that, in a system that is away from half filling and divided in two equal halves, an upper bound for the average entanglement entropy of random pure states with a fixed particle number and normally distributed real coefficients exhibits a deviation from the maximal value that grows with the square root of the volume of the system. Exact numerical results for highly excited eigenstates of a particle number conserving quantum chaotic model indicate that the bound is saturated with increasing system size.
Eigenstates of many-body localized (MBL) systems are characterized by area-law bipartite entanglement along with multifractal statistics of their amplitudes on Hilbert space. At the same time, sparse random pure states with fractal statistics are not compatible with area law and necessarily exhibit volume-law entanglement. This raises the question regarding what correlation functions of Hilbert-space amplitudes MBL eigenstates must possess for their area-law entanglement to be compatible with their multifractality. In this Letter, we identify and compute such appropriate Hilbert-space correlations which carry information of entanglement. We find that, for MBL eigenstates, these correlations are qualitatively different not only from those of ergodic states but also of sparse random states with fractal statistics. This enables us to show that indeed the said correlations lie at the heart of the coexistence of area-law entanglement and multifractality for MBL eigenstates.
Many-body quantum eigenstates of generic Hamiltonians at finite-energy density typically satisfy the ``volume law'' of entanglement entropy: the von Neumann entanglement entropy and the Renyi entropies for a subregion scale in proportion to its volume. Here we provide a connection between the volume law and the sign structure of eigenstates. In particular, we ask the following question: Can a positive wave function support a volume law entanglement? Remarkably, we find that a typical random positive wave function exhibits a constant law for Renyi entanglement entropies Sn{S}_{n}Sn​ for n>1n>1n>1, despite arbitrary large-amplitude fluctuations. We also provide evidence that the modulus of the finite-energy density eigenstates of generic local Hamiltonians shows similar behavior.
It is commonly expected that for quantum chaotic many body systems, the statistical properties approach those of random matrices when increasing the system size. We demonstrate for various kicked spin-1/2 chain models that the average eigenstate entanglement indeed approaches the random matrix result. However, the distribution of the eigenstate entanglement differs significantly. While for autonomous systems such deviations are expected, they are surprising for the more scrambling kicked systems. Similar deviations occur in a tensor-product random matrix model with all-to-all interactions. Therefore, we attribute the origin of the deviations for the kicked spin-1/2 chain models to the tensor-product structure of the Hilbert spaces. As a consequence, this would mean that such many body systems cannot be described by the standard random matrix ensembles.
The recent discovery that for large Hilbert spaces, almost all (that is, typical) Hamiltonians have eigenstates that place small subsystems in thermal equilibrium, has shed much light on the origins of irreversibility and thermalization. Here we give numerical evidence that many-body lattice systems generically approach typicality as the number of subsystems is increased, and thus provide further support for the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. Our results indicate that the deviation of many-body systems from typicality decreases exponentially with the number of systems. Further, by averaging over a number of randomly selected nearest-neighbor interactions, we obtain a powerlaw for the atypicality as a function of the Hilbert space dimension, distinct from the power law possessed by random Hamiltonians.