By numerically exact calculations of spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg models on small clusters up to 24 sites, we demonstrate that quantum entanglement between subsystems A and B in a pure ground state of a whole system A + B can induce thermal equilibrium in subsystem A. Here, the whole system is bipartitoned with the entanglement cut that covers the entire volume of subsystem A. An effective temperature T A of subsystem A induced by quantum entanglement is not a parameter but can be determined from the entanglement von Neumann entropy S A and the total energy E A of subsystem A calculated for the ground state of the whole system.We show that temperature T A can be derived by minimizing the relative entropy for the reduced density matrix operator of subsystem A and the Gibbs state (i.e., thermodynamic density matrix operator) of subsystem A with respect to the coupling strength between subsystems A and B. Temperature T A is essentially identical to the thermodynamic temperature, for which the entropy and the internal energy evaluated using the canonical ensemble in statistical mechanics for the isolated subsystem A agree numerically with the entanglement entropy S A and the total energy E A of subsystem A. Fidelity calculations ascertain that the reduced density matrix operator of subsystem A for the pure but entangled ground state of the whole system A + B matches, within a maximally 1.5% error in the finite size clusters studied, the thermodynamic density matrix operator of subsystem A at temperature T A , despite that these density-matrix operators are different in general.We also find that temperature T A evaluated from the ground state of the whole system depends insignificantly on the system sizes, which is consistent with the fact that the thermodynamic temperature is an intensive quantity.We argue that quantum fluctuation in an entangled pure state can mimic thermal fluctuation in a subsystem.We also provide two simple but nontrivial analytical examples of free bosons and free fermions for which the two density-matrix operators are exactly the same if the effective temperature T A is adopted.We furthermore discuss implications and possible applications of our finding.
By numerically exact calculations of spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg models on small clusters up to 24 sites, we demonstrate that quantum entanglement between subsystems A and B in a pure ground state of a whole system A + B can induce thermal equilibrium in subsystem A. Here, the whole system is bipartitoned with the entanglement cut that covers the entire volume of subsystem A. An effective temperature T A of subsystem A induced by quantum entanglement is not a parameter but can be determined from the entanglement von Neumann entropy S A and the total energy E A of subsystem A calculated for the ground state of the whole system.We show that temperature T A can be derived by minimizing the relative entropy for the reduced density matrix operator of subsystem A and the Gibbs state (i.e., thermodynamic density matrix operator) of subsystem A with respect to the coupling strength between subsystems A and B. Temperature T A is essentially identical to the thermodynamic temperature, for which the entropy and the internal energy evaluated using the canonical ensemble in statistical mechanics for the isolated subsystem A agree numerically with the entanglement entropy S A and the total energy E A of subsystem A. Fidelity calculations ascertain that the reduced density matrix operator of subsystem A for the pure but entangled ground state of the whole system A + B matches, within a maximally 1.5% error in the finite size clusters studied, the thermodynamic density matrix operator of subsystem A at temperature T A , despite that these density-matrix operators are different in general.We also find that temperature T A evaluated from the ground state of the whole system depends insignificantly on the system sizes, which is consistent with the fact that the thermodynamic temperature is an intensive quantity.We argue that quantum fluctuation in an entangled pure state can mimic thermal fluctuation in a subsystem.We also provide two simple but nontrivial analytical examples of free bosons and free fermions for which the two density-matrix operators are exactly the same if the effective temperature T A is adopted.We furthermore discuss implications and possible applications of our finding.
By numerically exact calculations of spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg models on small clusters, we demonstrate that quantum entanglement between subsystems A and B in a pure ground state of a whole system A+B can induce thermal equilibrium in subsystem A. Temperature TA of subsystem A is not a parameter but can be determined from the entanglement von Neumann entropy SA and the total energy EA of subsystem A calculated for the ground state of the whole system. Temperature TA is essentially identical to the thermodynamic temperature, for which the entropy and the internal energy evaluated using the canonical ensemble in statistical mechanics for the isolated subsystem A are almost indistinguishable numerically from the entanglement entropy SA and the total energy EA of subsystem A. Fidelity calculations ascertain that the reduced density matrix operator of subsystem A for the pure but entangled ground state of the whole system A+B is almost identical to the Gibbs state (i.e., thermodynamic density matrix operator) of subsystem A at temperature TA. We argue that quantum fluctuation in an entangled pure state can mimic thermal fluctuation in a subsystem. We also provide two simple but nontrivial examples of free bosons and free fermions for which these statements can be exactly proved analytically. We furthermore discuss implications and possible applications of our finding.
Numerical studies of the reduced density matrix of a gapped spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet on a two-leg ladder find that it has the same form as the Gibbs density matrix of a gapless spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnetic chain at a finite temperature determined by the spin gap of the ladder. We investigate this interesting result by considering a model of free fermions on a two-leg ladder (gapped by the inter-chain tunneling operator) and in spin systems on a ladder with a gapped ground state using exact solutions and several controlled approximations. We calculate the reduced density matrix and the entanglement entropy for a leg of the ladder (i.e. a cut made between the chains). In the fermionic system we find the exact form of the reduced density matrix for one of the chains and determine the entanglement spectrum explicitly. Here we find that in the weak tunneling limit of the ladder the entanglement entropy of one chain of the gapped ladder has a simple and universal form dictated by conformal invariance. In the case of the spin system, we consider the strong coupling limit by using perturbation theory and get the reduced density matrix by the Schmidt decomposition. The entanglement entropies of a general gapped system of two coupled conformal field theories (in 1 + 1 dimensions) are discussed using the replica trick and scaling arguments. We show that (1) for a system with a bulk gap the reduced density matrix has the form of a thermal density matrix, (2) the long-wavelength modes of one subsystem (a chain) of a gapped coupled system are always thermal, (3) the von Neumann entropy equals the thermodynamic entropy of one chain, and (4) the bulk gap plays the role of effective temperature.
We construct upper bounds on entanglement entropies of many-body quantum states that have fixed energy expectation values with respect to local Hamiltonians. Our focus is on entanglement entropies of subsystems that make up approximately half of the full system. The upper bound on the von Neumann entanglement entropy is half the sum of the thermal entropies of two fictitious systems at the same temperature as one another, with an additional area-law contribution in some systems. The effective temperature is chosen such that the sum of the thermal energies of the two fictitious systems matches the constraint on the energy of the state in the original problem; at subextensive energies, this temperature decreases with increasing system size. Our upper bounds on Rényi entanglement entropies take an analogous form. These inequalities show that, in systems that are frustration-free (FF) and whose zero-temperature subsystem thermal entropies scale with surface areas (rather than subsystem volumes), ground states are area-law entangled. For physical models of quantum matter, which have well-defined specific heat capacities (and are not necessarily FF), our bounds provide a way to convert this thermodynamic data into constraints on pure-state entanglement at both subextensive and extensive energies. We also show that our general upper bounds on half-system entanglement entropies are optimal, up to subleading corrections, in systems with reflection symmetry and above a subextensive energy threshold. A key application of our results is to constrain the entanglement of quantum states relevant to simulations of zero-temperature response functions, which have energies of order unity. We prove that, in wide varieties of FF systems in two dimensions and higher, the contributions of excitations to von Neumann entanglement entropy are subleading compared with the contribution from the ground state.
A system composed of identical spins and described by a quantum mechanical pure state is analyzed within the statistical framework presented in Part I of this work. We explicitly derive the typical values of the entropy, of the energy, and of the equilibrium reduced density matrix of a subsystem for the two different statistics introduced in Part I. In order to analyze their consistency with thermodynamics, these quantities of interest are evaluated in the limit of large number of components of the isolated system. The main results can be summarized as follows: typical values of the entropy and of the equilibrium reduced density matrix as functions of the internal energy in the fixed expectation energy ensemble do not satisfy the requirement of thermodynamics. On the contrary, the thermodynamical description is recovered from the random pure state ensemble (RPSE), provided that one considers systems large enough. The thermodynamic limit of the considered properties for the spin system reveals a number of important features. First canonical statistics (and thus, canonical typicality as long as the fluctuations around the average value are small) emerges without the need of assuming the microcanonical space for the global pure state. Moreover, we rigorously prove (i) the equivalence of the "global temperature," derived from the entropy equation of state, with the "local temperature" determining the canonical state of the subsystems; and (ii) the equivalence between the RPSE typical entropy and the canonical entropy for the overall system.
Thermal equilibrium in quantum many-body systems can be fully described by pure quantum states as far as local observables are concerned, while the conventional description of it is based on mixed-state ensembles.The thermodynamic entropy, in that case, is identified with the entanglement entropy of small subsystems.It scales with the size of the subsystem, which is called the volume law of entanglement.When the size of the subsystem increases, however, the correspondence between thermal and entanglement entropies fails and there appears a quantum correction to the simple volume-law scaling.Explicating the scaling of the entanglement entropy with the subsystem size is hence of great importance in connecting quantum physics to thermodynamics as well as analyzing recent experiments on ultracold atoms.In this thesis, we study the volume law of entanglement for pure quantum states representing thermal equilibrium.We derive an analytic formula of the volume law of entanglement for a certain class of pure states called canonical Thermal Pure Quantum (cTPQ) states which represent thermal equilibrium.We illustrate an advantage of the formula by numerically calculating the entanglement entropy of the cTPQ states and applying the formula to it.Furthermore, we argue that our formula universally applies to any sufficiently scrambled pure state, even if the state is not thermal.We consider two examples of such scrambled states, namely, stationary pure states after quantum quench and energy eigenstates of general Hamiltonians with and without integrability.The entanglement entropy of the former states, including actual experimental data in ultracold atoms, is in an excellent agreement with our formula as long as the states are scrambled.For the latter states, we find that our formula works as a good fitting function in non-integrable models to extract information in the thermodynamic limit from finite size systems.We also show that our formula can distinguish eigenstates of integrable models from non-integrable ones.4.3.1 Review of result by Lu and Grover for eigenstates of non-integrable models . . . . . . . . . . . .
A pure quantum state can fully describe thermal equilibrium as long as one focuses on local observables. The thermodynamic entropy can also be recovered as the entanglement entropy of small subsystems. When the size of the subsystem increases, however, quantum correlations break the correspondence and mandate a correction to this simple volume law. The elucidation of the size dependence of the entanglement entropy is thus essentially important in linking quantum physics with thermodynamics. Here we derive an analytic formula of the entanglement entropy for a class of pure states called cTPQ states representing equilibrium. We numerically find that our formula applies universally to any sufficiently scrambled pure state representing thermal equilibrium, i.e., energy eigenstates of non-integrable models and states after quantum quenches. Our formula is exploited as diagnostics for chaotic systems; it can distinguish integrable models from non-integrable models and many-body localization phases from chaotic phases.