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arXiv:2501.16822 · Journal of Statistical Mechanics Theory and Experiment

Quantum fluctuations can enhance or reduce positional uncertainty at finite temperature

Harukuni Ikeda

Published Sep 1, 2025• 0 citations
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Abstract

Abstract The uncertainty principle guarantees a non-zero value for the positional uncertainty, ⟨ Δ x 2 ⟩ > 0 , even without thermal fluctuations. This implies that quantum fluctuations inherently enhance positional uncertainty at zero temperature. A natural question then arises: what happens at finite temperatures, where the interplay between quantum and thermal fluctuations may give rise to complex and intriguing behaviors? To address this question, we systematically investigate the positional uncertainty, ⟨ Δ x 2 ⟩ , of a particle in equilibrium confined within a nonlinear potential of the form V ( x ) ∝ x n , where n = 2 , 4 , 6 , … represents an even exponent. Using path integral Monte Carlo simulations, we calculate ⟨ Δ x 2 ⟩ in equilibrium as a function of the thermal de Broglie wavelength Λ. Interestingly, for large values of n, ⟨ Δ x 2 ⟩ exhibits a non-monotonic dependence on Λ: it initially decreases with increasing Λ at small Λ but increases at larger Λ. To further understand this behavior, we employ a semiclassical approximation, which reveals that quantum fluctuations can reduce positional uncertainty for small Λ when the nonlinearity of the potential is sufficiently strong. Finally, we discuss the potential implications of this result for many-body phenomena driven by strong nonlinear interactions, such as glass transitions, where the transition densities exhibit a similar non-monotonic dependence on Λ.

DOI
10.1088/1742-5468/adfcc5

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The physical setups in this thesis do not only reveal interesting and new dynamical features in the out-of-equilibrium time evolution of interacting systems, but they also strongly underline the high degree of universality of thermalization for the classes of models studied here. May it be a system of coupled spins and photons, where the photons are pulled away from a thermal state by Markovian photon d

•Jun 29, 2015•1 citation
Abstract The uncertainty principle guarantees a non-zero value for the positional uncertainty, ⟨ Δ x 2 ⟩ > 0 , even without thermal fluctuations. This implies that quantum fluctuations inherently enhance positional uncertainty at zero temperature. A natural question then arises: what happens at finite temperatures, where the interplay between quantum and thermal fluctuations may give rise to complex and intriguing behaviors? To address this question, we systematically investigate the positional uncertainty, ⟨ Δ x 2 ⟩ , of a particle in equilibrium confined within a nonlinear potential of the form V ( x ) ∝ x n , where n = 2 , 4 , 6 , … represents an even exponent. Using path integral Monte Carlo simulations, we calculate ⟨ Δ x 2 ⟩ in equilibrium as a function of the thermal de Broglie wavelength Λ. Interestingly, for large values of n, ⟨ Δ x 2 ⟩ exhibits a non-monotonic dependence on Λ: it initially decreases with increasing Λ at small Λ but increases at larger Λ. To further understand this behavior, we employ a semiclassical approximation, which reveals that quantum fluctuations can reduce positional uncertainty for small Λ when the nonlinearity of the potential is sufficiently strong. Finally, we discuss the potential implications of this result for many-body phenomena driven by strong nonlinear interactions, such as glass transitions, where the transition densities exhibit a similar non-monotonic dependence on Λ.
The low-temperature phase diagram of one-dimensional weakly disordered quantum systems such as charge or spin density waves and Luttinger liquids is studied by a full finite temperature renormalization-group (RG) calculation. For vanishing quantum fluctuations this approach is amended by an exact solution in the case of strong disorder and by a mapping onto the Burgers equation with noise in the case of weak disorder, respectively. At zero temperature we reproduce the quantum phase transition between a pinned (localized) and an unpinned (delocalized) phase for weak and strong quantum fluctuations, respectively, as found previously by Fukuyama or Giamarchi and Schulz. At finite temperatures the localization transition is suppressed: the random potential is wiped out by thermal fluctuations on length scales larger than the thermal de Broglie wavelength of the phason excitations. The existence of a zero-temperature transition is reflected in a rich crossover phase diagram of the correlation functions. In particular we find four different scaling regions: a classical disordered, a quantum disordered, a quantum critical, and a thermal region. The results can be transferred directly to the discussion of the influence of disorder in superfluids. Finally we extend the RG calculation to the treatment of a commensurate lattice potential. Applications to related systems are discussed as well.
Abstract The study of the competition or coexistence of different ground states in many-body systems is an exciting and actual topic of research, both experimentally and theoretically. Quantum fluctuations of a given phase can suppress or enhance another phase depending on the nature of the coupling between the order parameters, their dynamics and the dimensionality of the system. The zero temperature phase diagrams of systems with competing scalar order parameters with quartic and bilinear coupling terms have been previously studied for the cases of a zero temperature bicritical point and of coexisting orders. In this work, we apply the Matsubara summation technique from finite temperature quantum field theory to introduce the effects of thermal fluctuations on the effective potential of these systems. This is essential to make contact with experiments. We consider two and three-dimensional materials characterized by a Lorentz invariant quantum critical theory, i.e., with dynamic critical exponent z = 1, such that time and space scale in the same way. We obtain that in both cases, thermal fluctuations lead to weak first-order temperature phase transitions, at which coexisting phases arising from quantum corrections become unstable. We show that above this critical temperature ( T c ), the system presents scaling behavior consistent with that approaching a quantum critical point. Below the transition the specific heat has a thermally activated contribution with a gap related to the size of the domains of the ordered phases. We obtain that T c decreases as a function of the distance to the zero temperature classical bicritical point (ZTCBP) in the coexistence region, implying that in our approach, the system attains the highest T c above the fine tuned value of this ZTCBP.
This paper is concerned with two questions in the decoherent histories approach to quantum mechanics: the emergence of approximate classical predictability, and the fluctuations about it necessitated by the uncertainty principle. It is in part a continuation of an earlier paper on the uncertainty principle for quantum-mechanical histories. We consider histories characterized by position samplings at n moments of time. This includes the case of position sampling continuous in time in the limit n\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}. We use this to construct a probability distribution on the value of (discrete approximations to) the field equations, F=mx\ifmmode\ddot\else\textasciidieresis\fi{}+V'(x), at n-2 times. We find that it is peaked around F=0; thus classical correlations are exhibited. We show that the width of the peak \ensuremath{\Delta}F is largely independent of the initial state. We show that the uncertainty principle takes the form 2${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\sigma}}}^{2}$(\ensuremath{\Delta}F)2{)}^{2})2\ensuremath{\ge}${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Elzxh}}}^{2}$/t2{\mathit{t}}^{2}t2, where \ensuremath{\sigma} is the width of the position samplings, and t is the time scale between projections. We determine the modifications to this result when the system is coupled to a thermal environment, thus obtaining a measure of the comparative sizes of quantum and thermal fluctuations. We show that the thermal fluctuations become comparable to the quantum fluctuations under the same conditions that decoherence effects come into play, in agreement with earlier work. We also study an alternative measure of classical correlations, namely, the conditional probability of finding a sequence of position samplings, given that particular initial phase space data have occurred.We use these results to address the issue of the formal interpretation of the probabilities for sequences of position samplings in the decoherent histories approach to quantum mechanics. Under appropriate conditions, which we describe, they admit an interpretation as a statistical ensemble of classical solutions, with the probability of each individual classical solution given by a smeared Wigner function of its initial data. We study the decoherence properties of histories characterized by the value of the field equations, F, at a sequence of times. We argue that they will be decoherent if their initial data are decoherent.
Quantum Phase Transitions Quantum phase transitions, in contrast to temperature-driven critical phenomena, occur due to a competition between different parameters describing the basic interactions of the system. Their specific feature is the quantum character of the critical fluctuations. This implies, through the uncertainty principle, that energy fluctuations and time are coupled. Then at zero temperature time plays a crucial and fundamental role, the static properties being entangled with the dynamics (Continentino, 1994a; Sondhi et al ., 1997; Sachdev, 1999). In this book we are mainly interested in quantum phase transitions that occur in electronic many-body systems and how scaling concepts can be useful to understand their properties close to these transitions (Continentino, 1994a). Even though a similar approach has been used in the case of interacting bosons (Fisher et al ., 1989) the fermionic problem has its own idiosyncrasies and difficulties. For example, there is no natural order parameter associated with the localisation transition in the electronic case, while bosons at zero temperature are either localised or superfluid so that the superfluid order parameter can be used to distinguish between both phases. If the results of the study of quantum phase transitions were restricted to zero temperature, this would be an interesting but purely academic area of research. What is really exciting about this subject is the effect of quantum critical points (QCP) in the finite temperature phase diagram of actual physical systems, even far away from the QCP (Freitas, 2015). As we will show, there is a special line in this phase diagram, the quantum critical trajectory , where the temperature dependence of the thermodynamic and transport properties is governed by the quantum critical exponents, i.e. those associated with the QCP. This and the observed crossover effects induced by temperature in the non-critical side of the phase diagram of a material with a QCP are sufficient to make the study of quantum phase transitions an inevitable subject. We start this chapter by introducing the scaling theory of quantum critical phenomena, since scaling concepts are used throughout this book.
In this paper, we consider entanglement in a system out of equilibrium, adopting the viewpoint given by the formalism of superstatistics. Such an approach yields a good effective description for a system in a slowly fluctuating environment within a weak interaction between the system and the environment. For this purpose, we introduce an alternative version of the formalism within a quantum mechanical picture and use it to study entanglement in the Heisenberg XY model, subject to temperature fluctuations. We consider both isotropic and anisotropic cases and explore the effect of different temperature fluctuations (χ^{2}, log-normal, and F distributions). Our results suggest that particular fluctuations may enhance entanglement and prevent it from vanishing at higher temperatures than those predicted for the same system at thermal equilibrium.
Thermalization, the evolution of an interacting many-body system towards a thermal Gibbs ensemble after initialization in an arbitrary non-equilibrium state, is currently a phenomenon of great interest, both in theory and experiment. As the time evolution of a quantum system is unitary, the proposed mechanism of thermalization in quantum many-body systems corresponds to the so-called eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) and the typicality of eigenstates. Although this formally solves the contradiction of thermalizing but unitary dynamics in a closed quantum many-body system, it does neither make any statement on the dynamical process of thermalization itself nor in which way the coupling of the system to an environment can hinder or modify the relaxation dynamics. In this thesis, we address both the question whether or not a quantum system driven away from equilibrium is able to relax to a thermal state, which fulfills detailed balance, and if one can identify universal behavior in the non-equilibrium relaxation dynamics. As a first realization of driven quantum systems out of equilibrium, we investigate a system of Ising spins, interacting with the quantized radiation field in an optical cavity. For multiple cavity modes, this system forms a highly entangled and frustrated state with infinite correlation times, known as a quantum spin glass. In the presence of drive and dissipation, introduced by coupling the intra-cavity radiation field to the photon vacuum outside the cavity via lossy mirrors, the quantum glass state is modified in a universal manner. For frequencies below the photon loss rate, the dissipation takes over and the system shows the universal behavior of a dissipative spin glass, with a characteristic spectral density mathcalA(omega)simsqrtomega\\mathcal{A}(\\omega)\\sim\\sqrt{\\omega}mathcalA(omega)simsqrtomega. On the other hand, for frequencies above the loss rate, the system retains the universal behavior of a zero temperature, quantum spin glass. Remarkably, at the glass transition, the two subsystems of spins and photons thermalize to a joint effective temperature, even in the presence of photon loss. This thermalization is a consequence of the strong spin-photon interactions, which favor detailed balance in the system and detain photons from escaping the cavity. In the thermalized system, the features of the spin glass are mirrored onto the photon degrees of freedom, leading to an emergent photon glass phase. Exploiting the inherent photon loss of the cavity, we make predictions of possible measurements on the escaping photons, which contain detailed information of the state inside the cavity and allow for a precise, non-destructive measurement of the glass state. As a further set of non-equilibrium systems, we consider one-dimensional quantum fluids driven out of equilibrium, whose universal low energy theory is formed by the so-called Luttinger Liquid description, which, due to its large degree of universality, is of intense theoretical and experimental interest. A set of recent experiments in research groups in Vienna, Innsbruck and Munich have probed the non-equilibrium time-evolution of one-dimensional quantum fluids for different experimental realizations and are pushing into a time regime, where thermalization is expected. From a theoretical point of view, one-dimensional quantum fluids are particular interesting, as Luttinger Liquids are integrable and therefore, due to an infinite number of constants of motion, do not thermalize. The leading order correction to the quadratic theory is irrelevant in the sense of the renormalization group and does therefore not modify static correlation functions, however, it breaks integrability and will therefore, even if irrelevant, induce a completely different non-equilibrium dynamics as the quadratic Luttinger theory alone. In this thesis, we derive for the first time a kinetic equation for interacting Luttinger Liquids, which describes the time evolution of the excitation densities for arbitrary initial states. The resonant character of the interaction makes a straightforward derivation of the kinetic equation, using Fermi\'s golden rule, impossible and we have to develop non-perturbative techniques in the Keldysh framework. We derive a closed expression for the time evolution of the excitation densities in terms of self-energies and vertex corrections. Close to equilibrium, the kinetic equation describes the exponential decay of excitations, with a decay rate sigmaR=mboxImSigmaR\\sigma^R=\\mbox{Im}\\Sigma^RsigmaR=mboxImSigmaR, determined by the self-energy at equilibrium. However, for long times tau\\tautau, it also reveals the presence of dynamical slow modes, which are the consequence of exactly energy conserving dynamics and lead to an algebraic decay simtau−etasubD\\sim\\tau^{-\\eta\\sub{D}}simtau−etasubD with etaD=0.58\\eta_D=0.58etaD​=0.58. The presence of these dynamical slow modes is not contained in the equilibrium Matsubara formalism, while they emerge naturally in the non-equilibrium formalism developed in this thesis. In order to initialize a one-dimensional quantum fluid out of equilibrium, we consider an interaction quench in a model of interacting, dispersive fermions in Chap.~\\ref{sec:Quench}. In this scenario, the fermionic interaction is suddenly changed at time t=0t=0t=0, such that for t>0t>0t>0 the system is not in an eigenstate and therefore undergoes a non-trivial time evolution. For the quadratic theory, the stationary state in the limit trightarrowinftyt\\rightarrow\\inftytrightarrowinfty is a non-thermal, or prethermal, state, described by a generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE). The GGE takes into account for the conservation of all integrals of motion, formed by the eigenmodes of the Hamiltonian. On the other hand, in the presence of non-linearities, the final state for trightarrowinftyt\\rightarrow\\inftytrightarrowinfty is a thermal state with a finite temperature T>0T>0T>0. . The spatio-temporal, dynamical thermalization process can be decomposed into three regimes: A prequench regime on the largest distances, which is determined by the initial state, a prethermal plateau for intermediate distances, which is determined by the metastable fixed point of the quadratic theory and a thermal region on the shortest distances. The latter spreads sub-ballistically simtalpha\\sim t^{\\alpha}simtalpha in space with 0<alpha<10<\\alpha<10<alpha<1 depending on the quench. Until complete thermalization (i.e. for times t<inftyt<\\inftyt<infty), the thermal region contains more energy than the prethermal and prequench region, which is expressed in a larger temperature Tt>TinftyT_{t}>T_{\\infty}Tt​>Tinfty​, decreasing towards its final value TinftyT_{\\infty}Tinfty​. As the system has achieved local detailed balance in the thermalized region, energy transport to the non-thermal region can only be performed by the macroscopic dynamical slow modes and the decay of the temperature Tt−Tinftysimt−etasubDT_{t}-T_{\\infty}\\sim t^{-\\eta\\sub{D}}Tt​−Tinfty​simt−etasubD again witnesses the presence of these slow modes. The very slow spreading of thermalization is consistent with recent experiments performed in Vienna, which observe a metastable, prethermal state after a quench and only observe the onset of thermalization on much larger time scales. As an immediate indication of thermalization, we determine the time evolution of the fermionic momentum distribution after a quench from non-interacting to interacting fermions. For this quench scenario, the step in the Fermi distribution at the Fermi momentum ksubFk\\sub{F}ksubF decays to zero algebraically in the absence of a non-linearity but as a stretched exponential (the exponent being proportional to the non-linearity) in the presence of a finite non-linearity. This can serve as a proof for the presence or absence of the non-linearity even on time-scales for which thermalization can not yet be observed. Finally, we consider a bosonic quantum fluid, which is driven away from equilibrium by permanent heating. The origin of the heating is atomic spontaneous emission of laser photons, which are used to create a coherent lattice potential in optical lattice experiments. This process preserves the system\'s U(1)U(1)U(1)-invariance, i.e. conserves the global particle number, and the corresponding long-wavelength description is a heated, interacting Luttinger Liquid, for which phonon modes are continuously populated with a momentum dependent rate partialtnqsimgamma∣q∣\\partial_tn_q\\sim\\gamma |q|partialt​nq​simgamma∣q∣. In the dynamics, we identify a quasi-thermal regime for large momenta, featuring an increasing time-dependent effective temperature. In this regime, due to fast phonon-phonon scattering, detailed balance has been achieved and is expressed by a time-local, increasing temperature. The thermal region emerges locally and spreads in space sub-ballistically according to xtsimt4/5x_t\\sim t^{4/5}xt​simt4/5. For larger distances, the system is described by an non-equilibrium phonon distribution nqsim∣q∣n_q\\sim |q|nq​sim∣q∣, which leads to a new, non-equilibrium behavior of large distance observables. For instance, the phonon decay rate scales universally as gammaqsim∣q∣5/3\\gamma_q\\sim |q|^{5/3}gammaq​sim∣q∣5/3, with a new non-equilibrium exponent eta=5/3\\eta=5/3eta=5/3, which differs from equilibrium. This new, universal behavior is guaranteed by the U(1)U(1)U(1) invariant dynamics of the system and is insensitive to further subleading perturbations. The non-equilibrium long-distance behavior can be determined experimentally by measuring the static and dynamic structure factor, both of which clearly indicate the exponents for phonon decay, eta=5/3\\eta=5/3eta=5/3 and for the spreading of thermalization etaT=4/5\\eta_T=4/5etaT​=4/5. Remarkably, even in the presence of this strong external drive, the interactions and their aim to achieve detailed balance are strong enough to establish a locally emerging and spatially spreading thermal region. The physical setups in this thesis do not only reveal interesting and new dynamical features in the out-of-equilibrium time evolution of interacting systems, but they also strongly underline the high degree of universality of thermalization for the classes of models studied here. May it be a system of coupled spins and photons, where the photons are pulled away from a thermal state by Markovian photon d