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arXiv:2303.15123 · Physical Review Letters

Ergodicity Breaking and Deviation from Eigenstate Thermalization in Relativistic Quantum Field Theory

Miha Srdinšek, Tomaž Prosen, Spyros Sotiriadis

Published Jan 12, 2024• 7 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The validity of the ergodic hypothesis in quantum systems can be rephrased in the form of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH), a set of statistical properties for the matrix elements of local observables in energy eigenstates, which is expected to hold in any ergodic system. We test the ETH in a nonintegrable model of relativistic quantum field theory (QFT) using the numerical method of Hamiltonian truncation in combination with analytical arguments based on Lorentz symmetry and renormalization group theory. We find that there is an infinite sequence of eigenstates with the characteristics of quantum many-body scars-that is, exceptional eigenstates with observable expectation values that lie far from thermal values-and we show that these states are one-quasiparticle states. We argue that in the thermodynamic limit the eigenstates cover the entire area between two diverging lines: the line of one-quasiparticle states, whose direction is dictated by relativistic kinematics, and the thermal average line. Our results suggest that the strong version of the ETH is violated in any relativistic QFT whose spectrum admits a quasiparticle description.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.132.021601

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The validity of the ergodic hypothesis in quantum systems can be rephrased in the form of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH), a set of statistical properties for the matrix elements of local observables in energy eigenstates, which is expected to hold in any ergodic system. We test the ETH in a nonintegrable model of relativistic quantum field theory (QFT) using the numerical method of Hamiltonian truncation in combination with analytical arguments based on Lorentz symmetry and renormalization group theory. We find that there is an infinite sequence of eigenstates with the characteristics of quantum many-body scars-that is, exceptional eigenstates with observable expectation values that lie far from thermal values-and we show that these states are one-quasiparticle states. We argue that in the thermodynamic limit the eigenstates cover the entire area between two diverging lines: the line of one-quasiparticle states, whose direction is dictated by relativistic kinematics, and the thermal average line. Our results suggest that the strong version of the ETH is violated in any relativistic QFT whose spectrum admits a quasiparticle description.
Eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) represents a breakthrough in many-body physics since it allows us to link thermalization of physical observables with the applicability of random matrix theory (RMT). Recent years were also extremely fruitful in exploring possible counterexamples to thermalization, ranging, among others, from integrability, single-particle chaos, many-body localization, many-body scars, to Hilbert-space fragmentation. In all these cases the conventional ETH is violated. However, it remains elusive how the conventional ETH breaks down when one approaches the boundaries of ergodicity, and whether the range of validity of the conventional ETH coincides with the validity of RMT-like spectral statistics. Here we bridge this gap and we introduce a scenario of the ETH breakdown in many-body quantum systems, dubbed fading ergodicity regime, which establishes a link between the conventional ETH and nonergodic behavior. We conjecture this scenario to be relevant for the description of finite many-body systems at the boundaries of ergodicity, and we provide numerical and analytical arguments for its validity in the quantum sun model of ergodicity-breaking phase transition. For the latter, we provide evidence that the breakdown of the conventional ETH is not associated with the breakdown of the RMT-like spectral statistics. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Ergodic isolated quantum many-body systems satisfy the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH), i.e. the expectation values of local observables in the system's eigenstates approach the predictions of the microcanonical ensemble.However, the ETH does not specify what happens to expectation values of local observables within an energy window when the average over disorder realizations is taken.As a result, the expectation values of local observables can be distributed over a relatively wide interval and may exhibit nontrivial structure, as shown in Aramthottil et al (2021 Phys.Rev. B 104 214201) for a quasiperiodic disordered system for site-resolved magnetization.We argue that the non-Gaussian form of this distribution may falsely suggest non-ergodicity and a breakdown of ETH.By considering various types of disorder, we find that the functional forms of the distributions of matrix elements of the site-resolved magnetization operator mirror the distribution of the onsite disorder.We argue that this distribution is a direct consequence of the local observable having a finite overlap with moments of the Hamiltonian.We then demonstrate how to adjust the energy window when analyzing expectation values of local observables in disordered quantum many-body systems to correctly assess the system's adherence to ETH, and provide a link between the distribution of expectation values in eigenstates and the outcomes of quench experiments.
Abstract Ergodic isolated quantum many-body systems satisfy the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH), i.e. the expectation values of local observables in the system’s eigenstates approach the predictions of the microcanonical ensemble. However, the ETH does not specify what happens to expectation values of local observables within an energy window when the average over disorder realizations is taken. As a result, the expectation values of local observables can be distributed over a relatively wide interval and may exhibit nontrivial structure, as shown in Aramthottil et al (2021 Phys. Rev. B 104 214201) for a quasiperiodic disordered system for site-resolved magnetization. We argue that the non-Gaussian form of this distribution may falsely suggest non-ergodicity and a breakdown of ETH. By considering various types of disorder, we find that the functional forms of the distributions of matrix elements of the site-resolved magnetization operator mirror the distribution of the onsite disorder. We argue that this distribution is a direct consequence of the local observable having a finite overlap with moments of the Hamiltonian. We then demonstrate how to adjust the energy window when analyzing expectation values of local observables in disordered quantum many-body systems to correctly assess the system’s adherence to ETH, and provide a link between the distribution of expectation values in eigenstates and the outcomes of quench experiments.
We ask whether the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) is valid in a strong sense: in the limit of an infinite system, every eigenstate is thermal. We examine expectation values of few-body operators in highly excited many-body eigenstates and search for "outliers," the eigenstates that deviate the most from ETH. We use exact diagonalization of two one-dimensional nonintegrable models: a quantum Ising chain with transverse and longitudinal fields, and hard-core bosons at half-filling with nearest- and next-nearest-neighbor hopping and interaction. We show that even the most extreme outliers appear to obey ETH as the system size increases and thus provide numerical evidences that support ETH in this strong sense. Finally, periodically driving the Ising Hamiltonian, we show that the eigenstates of the corresponding Floquet operator obey ETH even more closely. We attribute this better thermalization to removing the constraint of conservation of the total energy.
The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) provides a fundamental mechanism for emergent statistical mechanics in isolated chaotic quantum systems, asserting that individual energy eigenstates behave as pseudorandom vectors within an energy window. This enables a complete characterization of nontrivial correlations among matrix elements in the energy eigenbasis, as described by the full ETH ansatz. Nevertheless, this description breaks down in systems exhibiting quantum many-body scars, which host non-thermal eigenstates with extensive energy. In this Letter, we address this problem by formulating the \textit{scar full ETH}, which captures correlations among matrix elements involving scar states. The corresponding scaling forms and factorization properties are established using typicality arguments. Multi-time correlation functions for scar states are then organized in terms of both thermal and scar cumulants, providing a nontrivial reorganization of higher-order correlations. We numerically demonstrate the validity of this framework in the paradigmatic model of quantum scars, the PXP model. Our results pave the way for a systematic understanding of intriguing correlations in systems with quantum many-body scars.
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.