We propose a variational quantum algorithm for estimating microcanonical expectation values in models obeying the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. Using a relaxed criterion for convergence of the variational optimization loop, the algorithm generates weakly entangled superpositions of eigenstates at a given target energy density. An ensemble of these variational states is then used to estimate microcanonical averages of local operators, with an error whose dominant contribution decreases initially as a power law in the size of the ensemble and is ultimately limited by a small bias. We apply the algorithm to the one-dimensional mixed-field Ising model, where it converges for ansatz circuits of depth roughly linear in system size. The most accurate thermal estimates are produced for intermediate energy densities. In our error analysis, we find connections with recent works investigating the underpinnings of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. In particular, the failure of energy-basis matrix elements of local operators to behave as independent random variables is a potential source of error that the algorithm can overcome by averaging over an ensemble of variational states.
We propose a variational quantum algorithm for estimating microcanonical expectation values in models obeying the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. Using a relaxed criterion for convergence of the variational optimization loop, the algorithm generates weakly entangled superpositions of eigenstates at a given target energy density. An ensemble of these variational states is then used to estimate microcanonical averages of local operators, with an error whose dominant contribution decreases initially as a power law in the size of the ensemble and is ultimately limited by a small bias. We apply the algorithm to the one-dimensional mixed-field Ising model, where it converges for ansatz circuits of depth roughly linear in system size. The most accurate thermal estimates are produced for intermediate energy densities. In our error analysis, we find connections with recent works investigating the underpinnings of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. In particular, the failure of energy-basis matrix elements of local operators to behave as independent random variables is a potential source of error that the algorithm can overcome by averaging over an ensemble of variational states.
We derive an upper bound on the difference between the long-time average and the microcanonical ensemble average of observables in isolated quantum systems. We propose, numerically verify, and analytically support a new hypothesis, the eigenstate randomization hypothesis (ERH), which implies that in the energy eigenbasis the diagonal elements of observables fluctuate randomly. We show that ERH includes the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) and makes the aforementioned bound vanishingly small. Moreover, ERH is applicable to integrable systems for which ETH breaks down. We argue that the range of the validity of ERH determines that of the microcanonical description.
A very fundamental problem in quantum statistical mechanics involves whether—and how—an isolated quantum system will reach thermal equilibrium after waiting a long time. In quantum systems that do thermalize, the long-time expectation value of any “reasonable” operator will match its predicted value in the canonical ensemble. The Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH) posits that this thermalization occurs at the level of each individual energy eigenstate; in fact, any single eigenstate in a microcanonical energy window will predict the expectation values of such operators exactly. In the first part of this dissertation, we identify, for a generic model system, precisely which operators satisfy ETH, as well as limits to the information contained in a single eigenstate. Remarkably, our results strongly suggest that a single eigenstate can contain information about energy densities—and therefore temperatures—far away from the energy density of the eigenstate.Additionally, we study the possible breakdown of quantum thermalization in a model of itinerant electrons on a one-dimensional chain, with both spin and charge degrees of freedom. This model exhibits peculiar properties in the entanglement entropy, the apparent scaling of which is modified from a “volume law” to an “area law” after performing a partial, site-wise measurement on the system. These properties and others suggest that this model realizes a new, non-thermal phase of matter, known as a Quantum Disentangled Liquid (QDL). The putative existence of this phase has striking implications for the foundations of quantum statistical mechanics.
The emergence of statistical mechanics from quantum dynamics is conventionally understood through quantum chaos, the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH), and canonical typicality, which together explain the thermal behavior of local observables in quantum many-body systems. We provide a distinct mechanism in which, for a quantum many-body system under strong random perturbation, the chaotic behavior of the system's eigenvectors and a constraint on the total energy directly generate a canonical ensemble for the entire system. The canonical ensemble occurs as the first moment of the Porter-Thomas distribution of the system's chaotic eigenstates, and the constraint on the total energy sets the temperature in the ensemble. This yields canonically distributed expectation values without invoking ETH, a microcanonical ensemble, or a subsystem-bath partition for local and global observables. We numerically demonstrate the mechanism for the 1D transverse-field Ising model by showing canonically distributed eigenstate projectors and spin-spin correlators with distinctive temperature dependence of the correlation length. An implementation of this thermalization approach on a quantum computer can be utilized for thermal state preparation.
A characteristic feature of “quantum chaotic” systems is that their eigenspectra and eigenstates display universal statistical properties described by random matrix theory (RMT). However, eigenstates of local systems also encode structure beyond RMT. To capture this feature, we introduce a framework that allows us to compare the properties of eigenstates in local systems with those of pure random states. In particular, our framework defines a notion of distance between quantum state ensembles that utilizes the Kullback-Leibler divergence to compare the microcanonical distribution of entanglement entropy (EE) of eigenstates with a reference RMT distribution generated by pure random states (with appropriate constraints). This notion gives rise to a quantitative metric for quantum chaos that not only accounts for averages of the distributions but also higher moments. The differences in moments are compared on a highly resolved scale set by the standard deviation of the RMT distribution, which is exponentially small in system size. As a result, the metric can distinguish between chaotic and integrable behaviors and, in addition, quantify and compare the of chaos (in terms of proximity to RMT behavior) between two systems that are assumed to be chaotic. We implement our framework in local, minimally structured, Floquet random circuits, as well as a canonical family of many-body Hamiltonians, the mixed-field Ising model (MFIM). Importantly, for Hamiltonian systems, we find that the reference random distribution must be appropriately constrained to incorporate the effect of energy conservation in order to describe the ensemble properties of midspectrum eigenstates. The metric captures deviations from RMT across all models and parameters, including those that have been previously identified as strongly chaotic, and for which other diagnostics of chaos such as level spacing statistics look strongly thermal. In Floquet circuits, the dominant source of deviations is the second moment of the distribution, and this persists for all system sizes. For the MFIM, we find significant variation of the KL divergence in parameter space. Notably, we find a small region where deviations from RMT are minimized, suggesting that “maximally chaotic” Hamiltonians may exist in fine-tuned pockets of parameter space. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
We consider the set of all initial states within a microcanonical energy shell of an isolated many-body quantum system, which exhibit an arbitrary but fixed nonequilibrium expectation value for some given observable A. On the condition that this set is not too small, it is shown by means of a dynamical typicality approach that most such initial states exhibit thermalization if and only if A satisfies the so-called weak eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (wETH). Here, thermalization means that the expectation value of A spends most of its time close to the microcanonical value after initial transients have died out. The wETH means that, within the energy shell, most eigenstates of the pertinent system Hamiltonian exhibit very similar expectation values of A.
We propose a method to calculate finite-temperature properties of a quantum many-body system for a microcanonical ensemble by introducing a pure quantum state named here an energy-filtered random-phase state, which is also a potentially promising application of near-term quantum computers. In our formalism, a microcanonical ensemble is specified by two parameters, i.e., the energy of the system and its associated energy window. Accordingly, the density of states is expressed as a sum of Gaussians centered at the target energy with its spread corresponding to the width of the energy window. We then show that the thermodynamic quantities such as entropy and temperature are calculated by evaluating the trace of the time-evolution operator and the trace of the time-evolution operator multiplied by the Hamiltonian of the system. We also describe how these traces can be evaluated using random diagonal-unitary circuits appropriate to quantum computation. The pure quantum state representing our microcanonical ensemble is related to a state of the form introduced by Wall and Neuhauser for the filter diagonalization method [M. R. Wall and D. Neuhauser, J. Chem. Phys. 102, 8011 (1995)], and therefore we refer to it as an energy-filtered random-phase state. The energy-filtered random-phase state is essentially a Fourier transform of a time-evolved state whose initial state is prepared as a random-phase state, and the cut-off time in the time-integral for the Fourier transform sets the inverse of the width of the energy window. The proposed method is demonstrated numerically by calculating thermodynamic quantities for the one-dimensional spin-1/2 Heisenberg model on small clusters up to 28 qubits, showing that the method is most efficient for the target energy around which the dense distribution of energy eigenstates is found.