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arXiv:2103.05012 · Physical Review A

Emergent eigenstate solution for generalized thermalization

Yicheng Zhang, Lev Vidmar, Marcos Rigol

Published Sep 13, 2021• 3 citations
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Abstract

Generalized thermalization is a process that occurs in integrable systems in which unitary dynamics, e.g., following a quantum quench, results in states in which observables after equilibration are described by generalized Gibbs ensembles. Here we discuss an emergent eigenstate construction that allows one to built emergent local Hamiltonians of which one eigenstate captures the entire generalized thermalization process following a global quantum quench. Specifically, we study the emergent eigenstate that describes the quantum dynamics of hard-core bosons in one dimension for which the initial state is a density wave, and this state evolves under a homogeneous Hamiltonian.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.104.l031303

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Generalized thermalization is a process that occurs in integrable systems in which unitary dynamics, e.g., following a quantum quench, results in states in which observables after equilibration are described by generalized Gibbs ensembles. Here we discuss an emergent eigenstate construction that allows one to built emergent local Hamiltonians of which one eigenstate captures the entire generalized thermalization process following a global quantum quench. Specifically, we study the emergent eigenstate that describes the quantum dynamics of hard-core bosons in one dimension for which the initial state is a density wave, and this state evolves under a homogeneous Hamiltonian.
The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis conjectures that for a thermodynamically large system in one of its energy eigenstates, the reduced density matrix describing any finite subsystem is determined solely by a set of relevant conserved quantities. In a chaotic quantum system, only the energy is expected to play that role and hence eigenstates appear locally thermal. Integrable systems, on the other hand, possess an extensive number of such conserved quantities and therefore the reduced density matrix requires specification of all the corresponding parameters (generalized Gibbs ensemble). However, here we show by unbiased statistical sampling of the individual eigenstates with a given finite energy density that the local description of an overwhelming majority of these states of even such an integrable system is actually Gibbs-like, i.e., requires only the energy density of the eigenstate. Rare eigenstates that cannot be represented by the Gibbs ensemble can also be sampled efficiently by our method and their local properties are then shown to be described by appropriately truncated generalized Gibbs ensembles. We further show that the presence of these rare eigenstates differentiates the model from the chaotic case and leads to the system being described by a generalized Gibbs ensemble at long time under a unitary dynamics following a sudden quench, even when the initial state is a typical (Gibbs-like) eigenstate of the prequench Hamiltonian.
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.
After a quench, observables in an integrable system may not relax to the standard thermal values, but can relax to the ones predicted by the generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE) [M. Rigol et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 050405 (2007)]. The GGE has been shown to accurately describe observables in various one-dimensional integrable systems, but the origin of its success is not fully understood. Here we introduce a microcanonical version of the GGE and provide a justification of the GGE based on a generalized interpretation of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis, which was previously introduced to explain thermalization of nonintegrable systems. We study relaxation after a quench of one-dimensional hard-core bosons in an optical lattice. Exact numerical calculations for up to 10 particles on 50 lattice sites (≈10(10) eigenstates) validate our approach.
Within the emergent eigenstate solution to quantum dynamics [Phys. Rev. X 7, 021012 (2017)], one can construct a local operator (an emergent Hamiltonian) of which the time-evolving state is an eigenstate. Here we show that such a solution exists for the expansion dynamics of Tonks-Girardeau gases in optical lattices after turning off power-law (e.g., harmonic or quartic) confining potentials, which are geometric quenches that do not involve the boost operator. For systems that are initially in the ground state and undergo dynamical fermionization during the expansion, we show that they remain in the ground state of the emergent local Hamiltonian at all times. On the other hand, for systems at nonzero initial temperatures, the expansion dynamics can be described constructing a Gibbs ensemble for the emergent local Hamiltonian (an emergent Gibbs ensemble).
We investigate equilibration and generalized thermalization of the quantum Harmonic chain under local quantum quench. The quench action we consider is connecting two disjoint harmonic chains of different sizes and the system jumps between two integrable settings. We verify the validity of the generalized Gibbs ensemble description for this infinite-dimensional Hilbert space system and also identify equilibration between the subsystems as in classical systems. Using Bogoliubov transformations, we show that the eigenstates of the system prior to the quench evolve toward the Gibbs Generalized Ensemble description. Eigenstates that are more delocalized (in the sense of inverse participation ratio) prior to the quench, tend to equilibrate more rapidly. Further, through the phase space properties of a generalized Gibbs ensemble and the strength of stimulated emission, we identify the necessary criterion on the initial states for such relaxation at late times and also find out the states that would potentially not be described by the generalized Gibbs ensemble description.
We review exact approaches and recent results related to the relaxation dynamics and description after relaxation of various one-dimensional lattice systems of hard-core bosons after a sudden quench. We first analyze the integrable case, where the combination of analytical insights and computational techniques enable one to study large system sizes. Thermalization does not occur in this regime. However, after relaxation, observables can be described by a generalization of the Gibbs ensemble. We then utilize full exact diagonalization to study what happens as integrability is broken. We show that thermalization does occur in finite nonintegrable systems provided they are sufficiently far away from the integrable point. We argue that the onset of thermalization can be understood in terms of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis.