A bstract The dynamics of quantum entanglement plays a central role in explaining the emergence of thermal equilibrium in isolated many-body systems. However, entanglement is notoriously hard to measure, and can in fact be “forged”: recent works have introduced a notion of pseudoentanglement describing ensembles of many-body states that, while only weakly entangled, cannot be efficiently distinguished from states with much higher entanglement, such as random states in the Hilbert space. This prompts the question: how much entanglement is truly necessary to achieve thermal equilibrium in quantum systems? In this work we address this question by introducing random circuit models of quantum dynamics that, at late times, equilibrate to pseudoentangled ensembles — a phenomenon we name ensemble pseudothermalization . These models replicate all the efficiently observable predictions of thermal equilibrium, while generating only a small (and tunable) amount of entanglement, thus deviating from the “maximum-entropy principle” that underpins thermodynamics. We examine (i) how a pseudoentangled ensemble on a small subsystem spreads to the whole system as a function of time, and (ii) how a pseudoentangled ensemble can be generated from an initial product state. We map the above problems onto a family of classical Markov chains on subsets of the computational basis. The mixing times of such Markov chains are related to the time scales at which the states produced from the dynamics become indistinguishable from Haar-random states at the level of each statistical moment, or number of copies. Based on a combination of rigorous bounds and conjectures supported by numerics, we argue that each Markov chain’s relaxation time and mixing time have different asymptotic behavior in the limit of large system size. This is a necessary condition for a cutoff phenomenon : an abrupt dynamical transition to equilibrium. We thus conjecture that our random circuits give rise to asymptotically sharp distinguishability transitions.
A bstract The dynamics of quantum entanglement plays a central role in explaining the emergence of thermal equilibrium in isolated many-body systems. However, entanglement is notoriously hard to measure, and can in fact be “forged”: recent works have introduced a notion of pseudoentanglement describing ensembles of many-body states that, while only weakly entangled, cannot be efficiently distinguished from states with much higher entanglement, such as random states in the Hilbert space. This prompts the question: how much entanglement is truly necessary to achieve thermal equilibrium in quantum systems? In this work we address this question by introducing random circuit models of quantum dynamics that, at late times, equilibrate to pseudoentangled ensembles — a phenomenon we name ensemble pseudothermalization . These models replicate all the efficiently observable predictions of thermal equilibrium, while generating only a small (and tunable) amount of entanglement, thus deviating from the “maximum-entropy principle” that underpins thermodynamics. We examine (i) how a pseudoentangled ensemble on a small subsystem spreads to the whole system as a function of time, and (ii) how a pseudoentangled ensemble can be generated from an initial product state. We map the above problems onto a family of classical Markov chains on subsets of the computational basis. The mixing times of such Markov chains are related to the time scales at which the states produced from the dynamics become indistinguishable from Haar-random states at the level of each statistical moment, or number of copies. Based on a combination of rigorous bounds and conjectures supported by numerics, we argue that each Markov chain’s relaxation time and mixing time have different asymptotic behavior in the limit of large system size. This is a necessary condition for a cutoff phenomenon : an abrupt dynamical transition to equilibrium. We thus conjecture that our random circuits give rise to asymptotically sharp distinguishability transitions.
The emergence of statistical ensembles from the unitary evolution of isolated quantum systems is one of the most fundamental conundrums of Statistical Physics. One of the main avenues for its investigation is the out-of-equilibrium dynamics in many-body 1D quantum systems, and in particular the study of thermalization in generic models, or relaxation to a generalized Gibbs ensemble in integrable models. We consider quenches in the XXZ model. Our analysis relies on the thermodynamic and algebraic Bethe ansatz, generalized hydrodynamics, and the quasiparticle picture. Until recently, in integrable quenches, low-entangled initial states have been the primary choice. However, highly entangled initial states are attracting growing interest. We define a family of states with increasing entanglement while preserving macroscopic homogeneity. They are inspired by the rainbow state and we call them 2n-rainbow states owing to their 2n-site periodicity. A relatively recent conjecture states that, in the XXX model, random states exhibit local stationary states approaching infinite temperature as their unit cell grows. Given the similarity between such random states and the 2n-rainbow states, the central question addressed in our work is: does the 2n-rainbow state, as n grows, thermalize to infinite temperature in the XXZ model? We provide analytical and numerical evidence supporting this scenario. Moreover, we obtain some nice results concerning the entanglement dynamics.
Randomness generation through quantum-chaotic evolution underpins foundational questions in statistical mechanics and applications across quantum information science, including benchmarking, tomography, metrology, and demonstrations of quantum computational advantage. While statistical mechanics successfully captures the temporal averages of local observables, understanding randomness at the level of higher statistical moments remains a daunting challenge, with analytic progress largely confined to random quantum circuit models or fine-tuned systems exhibiting space-time duality. Here we study how much randomness can be dynamically generated by generic quantum-chaotic evolution under physical, non-random Hamiltonians. Combining theoretical insights with numerical simulations, we show that for broad classes of initially unentangled states, the dynamics become effectively Haar-random well before the system can ergodically explore the physically accessible Hilbert space. Both local and highly nonlocal observables, including entanglement measures, equilibrate to their Haar expectation values and fluctuations on polynomial timescales with remarkably high numerical precision, and with the fastest randomization occurring in regions of parameter space previously identified as maximally chaotic. Interestingly, this effective randomization can occur on timescales linear in system size, suggesting that the sub-ballistic growth of Renyi entropies typically observed in systems with conservation laws can be bypassed in non-random Hamiltonians with an appropriate choice of initial conditions.
Abstract The projected ensemble is based on the study of the quantum state of a subsystem A conditioned on projective measurements in its complement. Recent studies have observed that a more refined measure of the thermalization of a chaotic quantum system can be defined on the basis of convergence of the projected ensemble to a quantum state design, i.e. a system thermalizes when it becomes indistinguishable, up to the k th moment, from a Haar ensemble of uniformly distributed pure states. Here we consider a random unitary circuit with the brick-wall geometry and analyze its convergence to the Haar ensemble through the frame potential and its mapping to a statistical mechanical problem. This approach allows us to highlight a geometric interpretation of the frame potential based on the existence of a fluctuating membrane, similar to those appearing in the study of entanglement entropies. At large local Hilbert space dimension q , we find that all moments converge simultaneously with a time scaling linearly in the size of region A , a feature previously observed in dual unitary models. However, based on the geometric interpretation, we argue that the scaling at finite q on the basis of rare membrane fluctuations, finding the logarithmic scaling of design times t k = O ( log k ) . Our results are supported with numerical simulations performed at q = 2.
Entanglement is a quantum resource, in some ways analogous to randomness in classical computation. Inspired by recent work of Gheorghiu and Hoban, we define the notion of "pseudoentanglement'', a property exhibited by ensembles of efficiently constructible quantum states which are indistinguishable from quantum states with maximal entanglement. Our construction relies on the notion of quantum pseudorandom states -- first defined by Ji, Liu and Song -- which are efficiently constructible states indistinguishable from (maximally entangled) Haar-random states. Specifically, we give a construction of pseudoentangled states with entanglement entropy arbitrarily close to logn across every cut, a tight bound providing an exponential separation between computational vs information theoretic quantum pseudorandomness. We discuss applications of this result to Matrix Product State testing, entanglement distillation, and the complexity of the AdS/CFT correspondence. As compared with a previous version of this manuscript (arXiv:2211.00747v1) this version introduces a new pseudorandom state construction, has a simpler proof of correctness, and achieves a technically stronger result of low entanglement across all cuts simultaneously.
In this work we revisit the problem of equilibration in isolated many-body interacting quantum systems. We pay particular attention to quantum chaotic Hamiltonians, and rather than focusing on the properties of the asymptotic states and how they adhere to the predictions of the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis, we focus on the equilibration process itself, i.e., the road to equilibrium. Along the road to equilibrium the diagonal ensembles obey an emergent form of the second law of thermodynamics and we provide an information theoretic proof of this fact. With this proof at hand we show that the road to equilibrium is nothing but a hierarchy in time of diagonal ensembles. Furthermore, introducing the notions of statistical complexity and the entropy-complexity plane, we investigate the uniqueness of the road to equilibrium in a generic many-body system by comparing its trajectories in the entropy-complexity plane to those generated by a random Hamiltonian. Finally, by treating the random Hamiltonian as a perturbation we analyzed the stability of entropy-complexity trajectories associated with the road to equilibrium for a chaotic Hamiltonian and different types of initial states.
The emergence of randomness from unitary quantum dynamics is a central problem across diverse disciplines, ranging from the foundations of statistical mechanics to quantum algorithms and quantum computation. Physical systems are invariably subject to constraints -- from simple scalar symmetries to more complex non-Abelian ones -- that restrict the accessible regions of Hilbert space and obstruct the generation of pure random states. In this work, we show that for systems with noncommuting symmetries such as SU(2), the degree of Haar-like randomization achievable under unitary dynamics is strongly constrained by experimental limitations on state initialization, in particular low-entanglement initial states, rather than by the symmetry-constrained dynamics themselves. Specifically, we show that time-evolved states can, in principle, reproduce Haar-like behavior at the level of finite statistical moments (i.e., those accessible under realistic experimental conditions with a finite number of state copies) provided that the initial state matches the corresponding moments of the conserved operators in the Haar ensemble. However, for the unentangled initial states commonly used in programmable quantum systems, this condition cannot be satisfied. Consequently, even at asymptotically long times in strongly quantum-chaotic regimes, late-time states remain distinguishable from Haar-random states in probes such as entanglement entropy, with deviations from Haar behavior that remain finite with increasing system size. We quantify the maximal entanglement entropy achievable and identify the unentangled initial conditions that yield the most entropic late-time states. Our results show that the combination of non-Abelian symmetry structure and experimental constraints on state preparation can strongly limit the degree of Haar-like randomization achievable at late times.