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arXiv:1910.01593 · Physical Review Research

Engineering generalized Gibbs ensembles with trapped ions

Florentin Reiter, Florian Lange, Shreyans Jain, Matt Grau, Jonathan Home, Zala Lenarčič

Published Aug 12, 2021• 20 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The concept of generalized Gibbs ensembles (GGEs) has been introduced to describe steady states of integrable models. Recent advances show that GGEs can also be stabilized in nearly integrable quantum systems when driven by external fields and open. Here, we present a weakly dissipative dynamics that drives towards a steady-state GGE and is realistic to implement in systems of trapped ions. We outline the engineering of the desired dissipation by a combination of couplings which can be realized with ion-trap setups and discuss the experimental observables needed to detect a deviation from a thermal state. We present a mixed-species motional mode engineering technique in an array of microtraps and demonstrate the possibility to use sympathetic cooling to construct many-body dissipators. Our paper provides a blueprint for experimental observation of GGEs in open systems and opens an avenue for quantum simulation of driven-dissipative quantum many-body problems.

DOI
10.1103/physrevresearch.3.033142

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The concept of generalized Gibbs ensembles (GGEs) has been introduced to describe steady states of integrable models. Recent advances show that GGEs can also be stabilized in nearly integrable quantum systems when driven by external fields and open. Here, we present a weakly dissipative dynamics that drives towards a steady-state GGE and is realistic to implement in systems of trapped ions. We outline the engineering of the desired dissipation by a combination of couplings which can be realized with ion-trap setups and discuss the experimental observables needed to detect a deviation from a thermal state. We present a mixed-species motional mode engineering technique in an array of microtraps and demonstrate the possibility to use sympathetic cooling to construct many-body dissipators. Our paper provides a blueprint for experimental observation of GGEs in open systems and opens an avenue for quantum simulation of driven-dissipative quantum many-body problems.
Abstract The generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE) was introduced ten years ago to describe observables in isolated integrable quantum systems after equilibration. Since then, the GGE has been demonstrated to be a powerful tool to predict the outcome of the relaxation dynamics of few-body observables in a variety of integrable models, a process we call generalized thermalization. This review discusses several fundamental aspects of the GGE and generalized thermalization in integrable systems. In particular, we focus on questions such as: which observables equilibrate to the GGE predictions and who should play the role of the bath; what conserved quantities can be used to construct the GGE; what are the differences between generalized thermalization in noninteracting systems and in interacting systems mappable to noninteracting ones; why is it that the GGE works when traditional ensembles of statistical mechanics fail. Despite a lot of interest in these questions in recent years, no definite answers have been given. We review results for the XX model and for the transverse field Ising model. For the latter model, we also report original results and show that the GGE describes spin–spin correlations over the entire system. This makes apparent that there is no need to trace out a part of the system in real space for equilibration to occur and for the GGE to apply. In the past, a spectral decomposition of the weights of various statistical ensembles revealed that generalized eigenstate thermalization occurs in the XX model (hard-core bosons). Namely, eigenstates of the Hamiltonian with similar distributions of conserved quantities have similar expectation values of few-spin observables. Here we show that generalized eigenstate thermalization also occurs in the transverse field Ising model.
Integrable systems offer rare examples of solvable many-body problems in the quantum world. Because of the fine-tuned structure, their realization in nature and experiment is never completely accurate, and therefore effects of integrability are observed only transiently. One way to overcome this limitation is to weakly couple nearly integrable systems to baths and driving: this will stabilize integrable effects up to arbitrary time and encode them in the stationary state approximated by a generalized Gibbs ensemble. However, the description of such driven dissipative nearly integrable models is challenging and no exact analytical methods have been proposed so far. Here, we develop an iterative scheme in which integrability breaking perturbations (baths) determine the conserved quantities that play the leading role in a highly efficient truncated generalized Gibbs ensemble description. Our scheme paves the way for easier calculations in thermodynamically large systems and can be used to construct unknown conserved quantities.
Integrable quantum many-body systems are considered to equilibrate to generalized Gibbs ensembles (GGEs). A general mechanism of such relaxation to GGE has been shown for unitary evolutions of exactly solvable quadratic bosonic systems in the thermodynamic limit. Here, we explore the role of locality and interaction with surroundings in the relaxation by considering the reduced dynamics of a class of open systems weakly interacting with a reservoir, which is initially prepared in a locally perturbed GGE. The standard derivation of a quantum master equation fails to describe relaxation to GGE in the long-time limit in the presence of the initial perturbation. We investigate a proper quantum master equation that guarantees the relaxation to GGE to avoid this counterintuitive issue and describes the relaxation to the reduced state corresponding to GGE in the thermodynamic limit. In particular, we show that the stationary state of the open system is fully characterized by GGE of the reservoir, which is independent of the initial local perturbation.
Open quantum many-body systems with controllable dissipation can exhibit novel features in their dynamics and steady states. A paradigmatic example is the dissipative transverse field Ising model. It has been shown recently that the steady state of this model with all-to-all interactions is genuinely non-equilibrium near criticality, exhibiting a modified time-reversal symmetry and violating the fluctuation-dissipation theorem. Experimental study of such non-equilibrium steady-state phase transitions is however lacking. Here we propose realistic experimental setups and measurement schemes for current trapped-ion quantum simulators to demonstrate this phase transition, where controllable dissipation is engineered via a continuous weak optical pumping laser. With extensive numerical calculations, we show that strong signatures of this dissipative phase transition and its non-equilibrium properties can be observed with a small system size across a wide range of system parameters. In addition, we show that the same signatures can also be seen if the dissipation is instead achieved via Floquet dynamics with periodic and probabilistic resetting of the spins. Dissipation engineered in this way may allow the simulation of more general types of driven-dissipative systems or facilitate the dissipative preparation of useful many-body entangled states.
Unitary integrable models typically relax to a stationary Generalized Gibbs Ensemble (GGE), but in experimental realizations dissipation often breaks integrability. In this work, we use the recently introduced time-dependent GGE (t-GGE) approach to describe the open dynamics of a gas of bosons subject to atom losses and gains. We employ tensor network methods to provide numerical evidence of the exactness of the t-GGE in the limit of adiabatic dissipation, and of its accuracy in the regime of weak but finite dissipation. That accuracy is tested for two-point functions via the rapidity distribution, and for more complicated correlations through a non-Gaussianity measure. We combine this description with Generalized Hydrodynamics and we show that it correctly captures transport at the Euler scale. Our results demonstrate that the t-GGE approach is robust in both homogeneous and inhomogeneous settings.
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.