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arXiv:2409.08436

Random product states at high temperature equilibrate exponentially well

Yichen Huang

Published Sep 13, 2024• 0 citations
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Abstract

We prove that for all but a measure zero set of local Hamiltonians, starting from random product states at sufficiently high but finite temperature, with overwhelming probability expectation values of observables equilibrate such that at sufficiently long times, fluctuations around the stationary value are exponentially small in the system size.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2409.08436

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We prove that for all but a measure zero set of local Hamiltonians, starting from random product states at sufficiently high but finite temperature, with overwhelming probability expectation values of observables equilibrate such that at sufficiently long times, fluctuations around the stationary value are exponentially small in the system size.
The study of generic properties of quantum states has led to an abundance of insightful results.A meaningful set of states that can be efficiently prepared in experiments are ground states of gapped local Hamiltonians, which are well approximated by matrix product states.In this work, we introduce a picture of generic states within the trivial phase of matter with respect to their nonequilibrium and entropic properties.We do so by rigorously exploring nontranslation-invariant matrix product states drawn from a local independent and identically distributed Haar measure.We arrive at these results by exploiting techniques for computing moments of random unitary matrices and by exploiting a mapping to partition functions of classical statistical models, a method that has lead to valuable insights on local random quantum circuits.Specifically, we prove that such disordered random matrix product states equilibrate exponentially well with overwhelming probability under the time evolution of Hamiltonians featuring a nondegenerate spectrum.Moreover, we prove two results about the entanglement Rényi entropy: the entropy with respect to sufficiently disconnected subsystems is generically extensive in the system size, and for small connected systems, the entropy is almost maximal for sufficiently large bond dimensions.
Recently, there have been significant new insights concerning the conditions under which closed systems equilibrate locally. The question of whether subsystems thermalize—if the equilibrium state is independent of the initial state—is, however, much harder to answer in general. Here, we consider a setting in which thermalization can be addressed: a quantum quench under a Hamiltonian whose spectrum is fixed and whose basis is drawn from the Haar measure. If the Fourier transform of the spectral density is small, almost all bases lead to local equilibration to the thermal state with infinite temperature. This allows us to show that, under almost all Hamiltonians that are unitarily equivalent to a local Hamiltonian, it takes an algebraically small time for subsystems to thermalize.
Random quantum states drawn from the Haar ensemble with a constraint on the energy expectation value Eav=⟨ψ∣H∣ψ⟩E_{\mathrm{av}} = \langle ψ| H | ψ\rangleEav​=⟨ψ∣H∣ψ⟩ display \textit{eigenstate condensation}: for EavE_{\mathrm{av}}Eav​ below a critical value EcE_cEc​, they develop macroscopic overlap with the ground state. We study eigenstate condensation in systems with finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces. These systems display three phases: a ground-state phase, in which energy-constrained random states have macroscopic overlap with the ground state; a high-temperature phase, in which they have exponentially small overlap with each energy eigenstate; and an anti-ground-state phase, in which they have macroscopic overlap with the most highly excited state. In local spin systems the ground-state and anti-ground-state phases approach the middle of the spectrum as 1/[system size]1/[\text{system size}]1/[system size], but -- because the condensation phase transitions have exponential, rather than polynomial, finite-size scaling -- the crossover becomes exponentially sharp in system size and the high-temperature phase is best understood as an extended phase.
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.
Two identical finite quantum systems prepared initially at different temperatures, isolated from the environment, and subsequently brought into contact are demonstrated to relax towards Gibbs-like quasi-equilibrium states with a common temperature and small fluctuations around the time-averaged expectation values of generic observables. The temporal thermalization process proceeds via a chain of intermediate Gibbs-like states. We specify the conditions under which this scenario occurs and corroborate the quantum equilibration with two different models.
Predicting observables in equilibrium states is a central yet notoriously hard question in quantum many-body systems. In the physically relevant thermodynamic limit, certain mathematical formulations of this task have even been shown to result in undecidable problems. Using a finite-size scaling of algorithms devised for finite systems often fails due to the lack of certified convergence bounds for this limit. In this work, we design certified algorithms for computing expectation values of observables in the equilibrium states of local quantum Hamiltonians, both at zero and positive temperature. Importantly, our algorithms output rigorous lower and upper bounds on these values. This allows us to show that expectation values of local observables can be approximated in finite time, contrasting related undecidability results. When the Hamiltonian is commuting on a 2-dimensional lattice, we prove fast convergence of the hierarchy at high temperature and as a result for a desired precision ε\varepsilonε, local observables can be approximated by a convex optimization program of quasi-polynomial size in 1/ε1/\varepsilon1/ε.