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arXiv:2508.02398

Quantum thermalization in a dimerized J1-J2 model

Smitarani Mishra, Shaon Sahoo

Published Aug 4, 2025• 0 citations

Abstract

We revisit the J1-J2 frustrated Heisenberg spin-1/2 chain with dimerization (δ) or modulation in the nearest-neighbor couplings to investigate its thermalization behavior. While the dimerization tends to induce localization, the next-nearest-neighbor interaction J2 generally favors thermalization, making the assessment of the model's compliance with the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH) particularly subtle. The challenge is further compounded by the model's SU(2) symmetry; the study of ETH compliance is necessarily done for each symmetry sector but separating different sectors of this symmetry is known to be a computationally demanding task. The current study is driven by two main motivations: first, to explore whether the well-known ground-state phases of the model have any bearing on its thermalization properties; and second, to understand how the interplay between two competing factors, namely, the non-uniformity (via δ) and the beyond-nearest-neighbor interactions (via J2) governs the system's approach to thermal equilibrium. A systematic analysis shows that the ETH is most strongly satisfied for intermediate values of δ (~ 0.5) with J2 ranging from intermediate (~ 0.5) to large (~ 1)- a parameter regime falls within the spiral ground-state phase. It is also found that when the system is in the gapless ground-state phase (which falls within the N'eel phase), the ETH is more prone to violation. In the regime of large δ and small J2, the system is seen to enter a localized phase (characterized here by modulation in density-of-states; assessing ETH compliance is less meaningful for this phase.

DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2508.02398

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We revisit the J1-J2 frustrated Heisenberg spin-1/2 chain with dimerization (δ) or modulation in the nearest-neighbor couplings to investigate its thermalization behavior. While the dimerization tends to induce localization, the next-nearest-neighbor interaction J2 generally favors thermalization, making the assessment of the model's compliance with the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH) particularly subtle. The challenge is further compounded by the model's SU(2) symmetry; the study of ETH compliance is necessarily done for each symmetry sector but separating different sectors of this symmetry is known to be a computationally demanding task. The current study is driven by two main motivations: first, to explore whether the well-known ground-state phases of the model have any bearing on its thermalization properties; and second, to understand how the interplay between two competing factors, namely, the non-uniformity (via δ) and the beyond-nearest-neighbor interactions (via J2) governs the system's approach to thermal equilibrium. A systematic analysis shows that the ETH is most strongly satisfied for intermediate values of δ (~ 0.5) with J2 ranging from intermediate (~ 0.5) to large (~ 1)- a parameter regime falls within the spiral ground-state phase. It is also found that when the system is in the gapless ground-state phase (which falls within the N'eel phase), the ETH is more prone to violation. In the regime of large δ and small J2, the system is seen to enter a localized phase (characterized here by modulation in density-of-states; assessing ETH compliance is less meaningful for this phase.

We study Heisenberg spin-1/2 and spin-1 chains with alternating ferromagnetic (

J_1^F

) and antiferromagnetic (

J_1^A

) nearest-neighbor interactions and ferromagnetic next-nearest-neighbor interaction (

J_2^F

). In this model frustration is induced by the non-zero

J_2^F

and the effect of dimerization is realized by changing the strength of

J_1^A

for a fixed value of

J_1^F

. The model with site spin

s

behaves like a Haldane spin chain with site spin 2

J_1^F

in the limit of vanishing

J_2^F

and large

s

. We show that the exact ground state of the model can be found along a line in the parameter space. The phase diagram in the space of

J_1^A-J_2^F

is determined using numerical techniques complemented by some analytical calculations. A number of quantities, including the ground state spin, energy gap, structure factor, entanglement entropy, and zero temperature magnetization, are studied to understand the complete phase diagram. An interesting and application-wise important feature of this model is that it exhibits a macroscopic magnetization jump in the presence of a magnetic field; we study this using an effective Hamiltonian.

We study here different regions in phase diagrams of the spin-1/2, spin-1 and spin-3/2 one-dimensional antiferromagnetic Heisenberg systems with frustration (next-nearest-neighbor interaction J2) and dimerization (δ). In particular, we analyze the behaviors of the bipartite entanglement entropy and fidelity at the gapless to gapped phase transitions and across the lines separating different phases in the J2-δ plane. All the calculations in this work are based on numerical exact diagonalizations of finite systems.

We study diagnostics of thermalization in quantum many-body systems with global SU(2) symmetry, where the standard eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) is generalized to its non-Abelian form. As an eigenstate-level probe, we introduce a symmetry-resolved trace distance constructed from the block structure of the reduced density matrix. This block structure separates spin-sector probabilities from configurational fluctuations within each sector, naturally leading to a decomposition into a probability trace distance and a configurational trace distance. The microcanonical average of the former is bounded by fluctuations of the corresponding spin-sector probabilities within a microcanonical energy window, whereas the latter captures finer intra-sector fluctuations. In non-Abelian thermalizing systems, these spin-sector-probability fluctuations are constrained by the non-Abelian ETH and therefore become exponentially suppressed with system size. Numerical studies of the one-dimensional

J_1

--

J_2

Heisenberg chain are consistent with this picture and suggest that, in the thermal regime, the trace distance is asymptotically dominated by the configurational trace distance.

In this paper, we investigate the fidelity for the Heisenberg chain with the next-nearest-neighbor interaction (or the J1-J2 model) and analyze its connections with quantum phase transition. We compute the fidelity between the ground states and find that the phase transition point of the J1-J2 model cannot be well characterized by the ground-state fidelity for finite-size systems. Instead, we introduce and calculate the fidelity between the first excited states. Our results show that the quantum transition can be well characterized by the fidelity of the first excited state even for a small-size system.

We investigate the ground-state properties of the spin-half ${J}_{1}\ensuremath{-}{J}_{2}$ Heisenberg chain with a next-nearest-neighbor spin-Peierls dimerization using conformal field theory and Lanczos exact diagonalizations. In agreement with the results of a recent bosonization analysis by Sarkar and Sen [Phys. Rev. B

65,

172408 (2002)], we find that for small frustration

{(J}_{2}{/J}_{1})

the system is in a Luttinger spin-fluid phase, with gapless excitations, and a finite spin-wave velocity. In the regime of strong frustration the ground state is spontaneously dimerized and the bond alternation reduces the triplet gap, leading to a slight enhancement of the critical point separating the Luttinger phase from the gapped one. An accurate determination of the phase boundary is obtained numerically from the study of the excitation spectrum.

The J1-J3 Heisenberg spin models with nearest-neighbor (J1) and additional isotropic three-site (J3) spin interactions remain relatively less explored, although such types of competing exchange terms can naturally emerge from different sources, including the strong-coupling expansion of the multiorbital Hubbard model. Below we present a short survey of the recently published research in this field, the emphasis being on the characteristics of the variety of quantum phases supported by a few generic uniform- and alternating-spin J1-J3 Heisenberg chains. For the reason that the positive (J3>0) three-site couplings tend towards the formation of local quantum dimers, the J1-J3 spin models typically experience some spontaneous dimerization upon increasing J3. Actually, it occurred that the established dimer phases in spin-S J1-J3 Heisenberg chains (S>1/2) serve as complete analogues of the famous gapped Majumdar-Ghosh dimer phase in the spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain with next-nearest-neighbor couplings. The same dimerizations have been observed in the alternating-spin (S,σ) J1-J3 chains (S>σ), provided that the cell spin S+σ= integer, whereas for half-integer cell spin, the local dimer formation produces gapless spin-liquid ground states. The alternating-spin J1-J3 chains also provide some typical examples of spin models supporting the so-called non-Lieb-Mattis magnetic phases.