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arXiv:2303.10069

Bounds on eigenstate thermalization

Shoki Sugimoto, Ryusuke Hamazaki, Masahito Ueda

Published Mar 17, 2023• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH), which asserts that every eigenstate of a many-body quantum system is indistinguishable from a thermal ensemble, plays a pivotal role in understanding thermalization of isolated quantum systems. Yet, no evidence has been obtained as to whether the ETH holds for all few-body operators in a chaotic system; such few-body operators include key quantities in statistical mechanics, such as the total magnetization, the momentum distributions, and their low-order thermal and quantum fluctuations. Here, we formulate a conjecture that for a generic nonintegrable system the ETH holds simultaneously for all $m$-body operators with $m < α_{\ast} N$ in the thermodynamic limit for some nonzero constant $α_{\ast} > 0$. We first show the existence of such nontrivial constants for idealized (pseudo) random-matrix descriptions of many-body eigenstates. We then verify the conjecture for generic spin, Bose, and Fermi systems with local and few-body interactions by large-scale numerical calculations. Our results imply that generic systems satisfy the ETH simultaneously for all few-body operators, including their thermal and quantum fluctuations.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2303.10069

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The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH), which asserts that every eigenstate of a many-body quantum system is indistinguishable from a thermal ensemble, plays a pivotal role in understanding thermalization of isolated quantum systems. Yet, no evidence has been obtained as to whether the ETH holds for all few-body operators in a chaotic system; such few-body operators include key quantities in statistical mechanics, such as the total magnetization, the momentum distributions, and their low-order thermal and quantum fluctuations. Here, we formulate a conjecture that for a generic nonintegrable system the ETH holds simultaneously for all mmm-body operators with m<α∗Nm < α_{\ast} Nm<α∗​N in the thermodynamic limit for some nonzero constant α∗>0α_{\ast} > 0α∗​>0. We first show the existence of such nontrivial constants for idealized (pseudo) random-matrix descriptions of many-body eigenstates. We then verify the conjecture for generic spin, Bose, and Fermi systems with local and few-body interactions by large-scale numerical calculations. Our results imply that generic systems satisfy the ETH simultaneously for all few-body operators, including their thermal and quantum fluctuations.
The Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH) explains how isolated quantum many-body systems thermalize by proposing that each energy eigenstate is already thermal. The hypothesis is believed to be essential to the understanding of quantum chaos and implies various important thermodynamic relations. While by now there are many numerical validations of the ETH, only few analytical arguments supporting the ETH have been found (M. Rigol et al., Nature 452, 2008). One of them is based on a semiclassical limit (M. Srednicki, Phys. Rev. E 50, 1994). Another important reasoning was given by Deutsch, who showed how a small interaction, which is modeled by a random matrix, leads to ETH (J.M. Deutsch, Phys. Rev. A 43, 1991). This thesis aims to find justification for the assumptions made by Deutsch from a microscopic point of view. The idea is to analyze whether a generic quantum system can be brought to a form that satisfies Deutsch's ansatz. The method is to use flow equations to define unitary transformations to map the initial Hamiltonian to an effective one, which can be compared to a random matrix. The test system is a one-dimensional hardcore boson model, which is set up using exact diagonalization and numerous symmetries. We analyze the statistical properties of the numerically obtained Hamiltonian matrices and test for normality and compare them to a random transformation. In a second step we verify that the continuous unitary transformations do not destroy the structure of typical few-body observables by studying the scaling of the inverse participation ratio. The obtained results support our hypothesis that it is possible to extend Deutsch's argument to generic microscopic many-body Hamiltonians.
This review gives a pedagogical introduction to the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH), its basis, and its implications to statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. In the first part, ETH is introduced as a natural extension of ideas from quantum chaos and random matrix theory (RMT). To this end, we present a brief overview of classical and quantum chaos, as well as RMT and some of its most important predictions. The latter include the statistics of energy levels, eigenstate components, and matrix elements of observables. Building on these, we introduce the ETH and show that it allows one to describe thermalization in isolated chaotic systems without invoking the notion of an external bath. We examine numerical evidence of eigenstate thermalization from studies of many-body lattice systems. We also introduce the concept of a quench as a means of taking isolated systems out of equilibrium, and discuss results of numerical experiments on quantum quenches. The second part of the review explores the implications of quantum chaos and ETH to thermodynamics. Basic thermodynamic relations are derived, including the second law of thermodynamics, the fundamental thermodynamic relation, fluctuation theorems, the fluctuation–dissipation relation, and the Einstein and Onsager relations. In particular, it is shown that quantum chaos allows one to prove these relations for individual Hamiltonian eigenstates and thus extend them to arbitrary stationary statistical ensembles. In some cases, it is possible to extend their regimes of applicability beyond the standard thermal equilibrium domain. We then show how one can use these relations to obtain nontrivial universal energy distributions in continuously driven systems. At the end of the review, we briefly discuss the relaxation dynamics and description after relaxation of integrable quantum systems, for which ETH is violated. We present results from numerical experiments and analytical studies of quantum quenches at integrability. We introduce the concept of the generalized Gibbs ensemble and discuss its connection with ideas of prethermalization in weakly interacting systems.
We verify that the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) holds universally for locally interacting quantum many-body systems. Introducing random matrix ensembles with interactions, we numerically obtain a distribution of maximum fluctuations of eigenstate expectation values for different realizations of interactions. This distribution, which cannot be obtained from the conventional random matrix theory involving nonlocal correlations, demonstrates that an overwhelming majority of pairs of local Hamiltonians and observables satisfy the ETH with exponentially small fluctuations. The ergodicity of our random matrix ensembles breaks down because of locality.
Understanding how isolated quantum systems thermalize has recently gathered renewed interest almost 100 years after the first work by von Neumann, thanks to the experimental realizations of such systems. Experimental and numerical pieces of evidence imply that nonintegrability of the system plays an important role in thermalization. Nonintegrable systems that conserve energy alone are expected to be effectively described by the (micro)canonical ensemble due to the so-called eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) in the thermodynamic limit. In contrast, it is expected that stationary states in integrable systems are described not by the canonical ensemble but by the generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE) due to the existence of many nontrivial conserved quantities. In this thesis, we study thermalization and its mechanism in nonintegrable systems from two perspectives. We first study how well the ETH and its finite-size corrections can be predicted by random matrix theory (RMT). Next, we present our study on the emergence of the GGE in a nonintegrable system with an extensive number of local symmetries.
The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) attempts to bridge the gap between quantum mechanical and statistical mechanical descriptions of isolated quantum systems. Here, we define unbiased measures for how well the ETH works in various regimes, by mapping general interacting quantum systems on regular lattices onto a single particle living on a high-dimensional graph. By numerically analyzing deviations from ETH behavior in the nonintegrable Ising model, we propose a quantity that we call the n-weight to democratically characterize the average deviations for all operators residing on a given number of sites, irrespective of their spatial structure. It appears to have a simple scaling form, which we conjecture to hold true for all nonintegrable systems. A closely related quantity, which we term the n-distinguishability, tells us how well two states can be distinguished if only n-site operators are measured. Along the way, we discover that complicated operators on average are worse than simple ones at distinguishing between neighboring eigenstates, contrary to the naive intuition created by the usual statements of the ETH that few-body (many-body) operators acquire the same (different) expectation values in nearby eigenstates at finite energy density. Finally, we sketch heuristic arguments that the ETH originates from the limited ability of simple operators to distinguish between quantum states of a system, especially when the states are subject to constraints such as roughly fixed energy with respect to a local Hamiltonian.
The Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH) has played a key role in recent advances in the high energy and condensed matter communities. It explains how an isolated quantum system in a far-from-equilibrium initial state can evolve to a state that is indistinguishable from thermal equilibrium, with observables relaxing to almost time-independent results that can be described using traditional statistical mechanics ensembles. In this work we probe the limits of ETH, pushing it outside its prototypical applications in several directions. We design a qutrit lattice system with conserved quasilocal charge, in which we verify a form of generalized eigenstate thermalization. We also observe signatures of thermalization in states well outside microcanonical windows of both charge and energy, which we dub `generic ETH.'