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arXiv:2411.14406 · Physical Review Research

Full counting statistics after quantum quenches as hydrodynamic fluctuations

Dávid X. Horváth, Benjamin Doyon, Paola Ruggiero

Published May 29, 2026• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The statistics of fluctuations on large regions of space encodes universal properties of many-body systems. At equilibrium, it is described by thermodynamics. However, away from equilibrium such as after quantum quenches, the fundamental principles are more nebulous. In particular, although exact results have been conjectured in integrable models, a correct understanding of the physics is largely missing. In this paper, we explain these principles, taking the example of the number of particles lying on a large interval in one-dimensional interacting systems. These are based on simple hydrodynamic arguments from the theory of ballistically transported fluctuations, and, in particular, the Euler-scale transport of long-range correlations. Using these principles, we obtain the full counting statistics in terms of thermodynamic and hydrodynamic quantities, whose validity depends on the structure of hydrodynamic modes and on the fluctuations in the initial state. In fermionic-statistics interacting integrable models with a continuum of hydrodynamic modes, such as the Lieb-Liniger model for cold atomic gases, the formula reproduces previous conjectures, but is in fact not exact: It gives the correct cumulants up to, including, order 5, while long-range correlations modify higher cumulants. In integrable and nonintegrable models with two or less hydrodynamic modes, the formula is expected to give all cumulants.

DOI
10.1103/gds2-l18d

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The statistics of fluctuations on large regions of space encodes universal properties of many-body systems. At equilibrium, it is described by thermodynamics. However, away from equilibrium such as after quantum quenches, the fundamental principles are more nebulous. In particular, although exact results have been conjectured in integrable models, a correct understanding of the physics is largely missing. In this paper, we explain these principles, taking the example of the number of particles lying on a large interval in one-dimensional interacting systems. These are based on simple hydrodynamic arguments from the theory of ballistically transported fluctuations, and, in particular, the Euler-scale transport of long-range correlations. Using these principles, we obtain the full counting statistics in terms of thermodynamic and hydrodynamic quantities, whose validity depends on the structure of hydrodynamic modes and on the fluctuations in the initial state. In fermionic-statistics interacting integrable models with a continuum of hydrodynamic modes, such as the Lieb-Liniger model for cold atomic gases, the formula reproduces previous conjectures, but is in fact not exact: It gives the correct cumulants up to, including, order 5, while long-range correlations modify higher cumulants. In integrable and nonintegrable models with two or less hydrodynamic modes, the formula is expected to give all cumulants.
We study the dynamics of charge fluctuations after homogeneous quantum quenches in one-dimensional systems with ballistic transport. For short but macroscopic times where the non-trivial dynamics is largely dominated by long-range correlations, a simple expression for the associated full counting statistics can be obtained by hydrodynamic arguments. This formula links the non-equilibrium charge fluctuation after the quench to the fluctuations of the associated current after a charge-biased inhomogeneous modification of the original quench which corresponds to the paradigmatic partitioning protocol. Under certain assumptions, the fluctuations in the latter case can be expressed by explicit closed form formulas in terms of thermodynamic and hydrodynamic quantities via the Ballistic Fluctuation Theory. In this work, we identify precise physical conditions for the applicability of a fully hydrodynamic theory, and provide a detailed analysis explicitly demonstrating how such conditions are met and how this leads to such hydrodynamic treatment. We discuss these conditions at length in non-relativistic free fermions, where calculations become feasible and allow for cross-checks against exact results. In physically relevant cases, strong long-range correlations can complicate the hydrodynamic picture, but our formula still correctly reproduces the first cumulants.
Abstract We propose a general formalism, within large-deviation theory, giving access to the exact statistics of fluctuations of ballistically transported conserved quantities in homogeneous, stationary states. The formalism is expected to apply to any system with an Euler hydrodynamic description, classical or quantum, integrable or not, in or out of equilibrium. We express the exact scaled cumulant generating function (or full counting statistics) for any (quasi-)local conserved quantity in terms of the flux Jacobian. We show that the “extended fluctuation relations” of Bernard and Doyon follow from the linearity of the hydrodynamic equations, forming a marker of “freeness” much like the absence of hydrodynamic diffusion does. We show how an extension of the formalism gives exact exponential behaviours of spatio-temporal two-point functions of twist fields, with applications to order-parameter dynamical correlations in arbitrary homogeneous, stationary state. We explain in what situations the large-deviation principle at the basis of the results fail, and discuss how this connects with nonlinear fluctuating hydrodynamics. Applying the formalism to conformal hydrodynamics, we evaluate the exact cumulants of energy transport in quantum critical systems of arbitrary dimension at low but nonzero temperatures, observing a phase transition for Lorentz boosts at the sound velocity.
We propose exact results for the full counting statistics, or the scaled cumulant generating function, pertaining to the transfer of arbitrary conserved quantities across an interface in homogeneous integrable models out of equilibrium. We do this by combining insights from generalised hydrodynamics with a theory of large deviations in ballistic transport. The results are applicable to a wide variety of physical systems, including the Lieb-Liniger gas and the Heisenberg chain. We confirm the predictions in non-equilibrium steady states obtained by the partitioning protocol, by comparing with Monte Carlo simulations of this protocol in the classical hard rod gas. We verify numerically that the exact results obey the correct non-equilibrium fluctuation relations with the appropriate initial conditions.
Unless constrained by symmetry, measurement of an observable on an ensemble of identical quantum systems returns a distribution of values which are encoded in the full counting statistics. While the mean value of this distribution is important for determining certain properties of a system, the full distribution can also exhibit universal behavior. In this paper we study the full counting statistics of particle number in one-dimensional interacting Bose and Fermi gases which have been quenched far from equilibrium. In particular, we consider the time evolution of the Lieb-Liniger and Gaudin-Yang models quenched from a Bose-Einstein condensate initial state and calculate the full counting statistics of the particle number within a subsystem. We show that the scaled cumulants of the charge in the initial state and at long times are simply related and, in particular, the latter are independent of the model parameters. Using the quasiparticle picture we obtain the full time evolution of the cumulants and find that although their end points are fixed, the finite-time dynamics depends strongly on the model parameters. We go on to construct the scaled cumulant generating functions and from this determine the limiting charge probability distributions at long time which are shown to exhibit distinct, nontrivial, and non-Gaussian fluctuations and large deviations. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
We derive an exact formula for the scaled cumulant generating function of the time-integrated current associated to an arbitrary ballistically transported conserved charge. Our results rely on the Euler-scale description of interacting, many-body, integrable models out of equilibrium given by the generalized hydrodynamics, and on the large deviation theory. Crucially, our findings extend previous studies by accounting for inhomogeneous and dynamical initial states in interacting systems. We present exact expressions for the first three cumulants of the time-integrated current. Considering the non-interacting limit of our general expression for the scaled cumulant generating function, we further show that for the partitioning protocol initial state our result coincides with previous results of the literature. Given the universality of the generalized hydrodynamics, the expression obtained for the scaled cumulant generating function is applicable to any interacting integrable model obeying the hydrodynamic equations, both classical and quantum.
At large scales of space and time, the nonequilibrium dynamics of local observables in extensive many-body systems is well described by hydrodynamics. At the Euler scale, one assumes that each mesoscopic region independently reaches a state of maximal entropy under the constraints given by the available conservation laws. Away from phase transitions, maximal entropy states show exponential correlation decay, and independence of fluid cells might be assumed to subsist during the course of time evolution. We show that this picture is incorrect: under ballistic scaling, regions separated by macroscopic distances "develop long-range correlations as time passes." These correlations take a universal form that only depends on the Euler hydrodynamics of the model. They are rooted in the large-scale motion of interacting fluid modes and are the dominant long-range correlations developing in time from long-wavelength, entropy-maximized states. They require "the presence of interaction" and "at least two different fluid modes" and are of a fundamentally different nature from well-known long-range correlations occurring from diffusive spreading or from quasiparticle excitations produced in far-from-equilibrium quenches. We provide a universal theoretical framework to exactly evaluate them, an adaptation of the macroscopic fluctuation theory to the Euler scale. We verify our exact predictions in the hard-rod gas, by comparing with numerical simulations and finding excellent agreement.