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arXiv:2509.20445

On the Hydrodynamic Approximation of Quantum Integrable Models -- An Illustration via the repulsive Lieb-Liniger Model

Friedrich Hübner

Published Sep 24, 2025• 0 citations
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Abstract

Generalized hydrodynamics is a framework to study the large scale dynamics of integrable models, special fine-tuned one-dimensional many-body systems that possess an infinite number of local conserved quantities. Unlike classical models, where the microscopic origins of generalized hydrodynamics are better understood, in quantum models it can only be derived using the hydrodynamic formalism. Using the paradigmatic and experimentally relevant repulsive Lieb-Liniger model as an example, this thesis introduces a new viewpoint on the dynamics of quantum integrable models by introducing so-called semi-classical Bethe models. These classical integrable models act as an intermediate description between the microscopic quantum realm and the macroscopic generalized hydrodynamics. After introducing these models and discussing their properties, we study the generalized hydrodynamics equation using new tools and show that solutions to the Euler generalized hydrodynamics equation of the Lieb-Liniger model exist, are unique and do not develop gradient catastrophes. Finally, we discuss new insights into the physics governing the diffusive correction, which, contrary to prior belief, is not described by a Navier-Stokes-like equation. Focusing on the main intuitive ideas, the thesis aims to provide a self-contained overview over these exciting new developments on generalized hydrodynamics.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2509.20445

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Generalized hydrodynamics is a framework to study the large scale dynamics of integrable models, special fine-tuned one-dimensional many-body systems that possess an infinite number of local conserved quantities. Unlike classical models, where the microscopic origins of generalized hydrodynamics are better understood, in quantum models it can only be derived using the hydrodynamic formalism. Using the paradigmatic and experimentally relevant repulsive Lieb-Liniger model as an example, this thesis introduces a new viewpoint on the dynamics of quantum integrable models by introducing so-called semi-classical Bethe models. These classical integrable models act as an intermediate description between the microscopic quantum realm and the macroscopic generalized hydrodynamics. After introducing these models and discussing their properties, we study the generalized hydrodynamics equation using new tools and show that solutions to the Euler generalized hydrodynamics equation of the Lieb-Liniger model exist, are unique and do not develop gradient catastrophes. Finally, we discuss new insights into the physics governing the diffusive correction, which, contrary to prior belief, is not described by a Navier-Stokes-like equation. Focusing on the main intuitive ideas, the thesis aims to provide a self-contained overview over these exciting new developments on generalized hydrodynamics.
We show that hydrodynamic diffusion is generically present in many-body, one-dimensional interacting quantum and classical integrable models. We extend the recently developed generalized hydrodynamic (GHD) to include terms of Navier-Stokes type, which leads to positive entropy production and diffusive relaxation mechanisms. These terms provide the subleading diffusive corrections to Euler-scale GHD for the large-scale nonequilibrium dynamics of integrable systems, and arise due to two-body scatterings among quasiparticles. We give exact expressions for the diffusion coefficients. Our results apply to a large class of integrable models, including quantum and classical, Galilean and relativistic field theories, chains, and gases in one dimension, such as the Lieb-Liniger model describing cold atom gases and the Heisenberg quantum spin chain. We provide numerical evaluations in the Heisenberg XXZ spin chain, both for the spin diffusion constant, and for the diffusive effects during the melting of a small domain wall of spins, finding excellent agreement with time-dependent density matrix renormalization group numerical simulations.
We present steps towards an ab initio derivation of generalised hydrodynamics in quantum integrable models, starting from the Bethe wave functions, and explained on the example of the repulsive Lieb-Liniger model. This includes an identification of the generalised hydrodynamics quasi-particles as wave packets in the quantum model. These wave packets evolve according to a classical particle model and collect two-particle scattering shifts similar to solitons in integrable PDEs. We then discuss potential routes to obtain the generalised hydrodynamics equation for average conserved densities in long-wavelength states from this description. As part of this, we provide an explicit formula for the action of the spectral phase-space density operator on Bethe wave functions, and show that it generates local conserved densities.
Abstract We present steps towards an ab initio derivation of generalized hydrodynamics (GHD) in quantum integrable models, starting from the Bethe wave functions, and explained on the example of the repulsive Lieb–Liniger model. This includes an identification of the GHD quasi-particles as wave packets in the quantum model. These wave packets evolve according to a classical particle model and collect two-particle scattering shifts similar to solitons in integrable PDEs. We then discuss potential routes to obtain the GHD equation for average conserved densities in long-wavelength states from this description. As part of this, we provide an explicit formula for the action of the spectral phase-space density operator on Bethe wave functions, and show that it generates local conserved densities.
In conventional fluids, it is well known that Euler-scale equations are plagued by ambiguiti es and instabilities. In one dimension smooth initial conditions may develop shocks, and weak solutions, such as for domain wall initial conditions (the paradigmatic Riemann problem of hydrodynamics), are not unique (and must be supplemented by physically motivated conditions such as non-negative entropy production). The absence of shock formation experimentally observed in quasi-one-dimensional cold-atomic gases, which are described by the Lieb-Liniger model, provides perhaps the strongest pointer to a modification of the hydrodynamic equation due to integrability. Generalized hydrodynamics (GHD) is the required hydrodynamic theory, taking into account the infinite number of conserved quantities afforded by integrability. We provide a new quadrature for the GHD equation—a solution in terms of a Banach fixed-point problem where time has been explicitly integrated. The quadrature is an efficient numerical solution tool; and it allows us, in the Lieb-Liniger model, to rigorously show that no shock may appear at all times, and, when combined with recent hydrodynamic fluctuation theories, to obtain new expressions for correlations in nonstationary states, establishing for the first time the presence of discontinuities that are fundamental to the nonequilibrium physics of integrable systems.
During the past decade, a number of attempts to formulate a continuum description of complex states of matter have been proposed to circumvent more cumbersome many-body and simulation methods.Typically, these have been quantum systems (e.g., electrons) and the resulting phenomenologies collectively often called "quantum hydrodynamics."However, there is extensive work from the past based in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics on the microscopic origins of macroscopic continuum dynamics that has not been exploited in this context.Although formally exact, its original target was the derivation of Navier-Stokes hydrodynamics for slowly varying states in space and time.The objective here is to revisit that work for the present interest in complex quantum states-possible strong degeneracy, strong coupling, and all space-time scales.The result is an exact representation of generalized hydrodynamics suitable for introducing controlled approximations for diverse specific cases and for critiquing existing work.
The theory of generalized hydrodynamics (GHD) was recently developed as a new tool for the study of inhomogeneous time evolution in many-body interacting systems with infinitely many conserved charges. In this Letter, we show that it supersedes the widely used conventional hydrodynamics (CHD) of one-dimensional Bose gases. We illustrate this by studying "nonlinear sound waves" emanating from initial density accumulations in the Lieb-Liniger model. We show that, at zero temperature and in the absence of shocks, GHD reduces to CHD, thus for the first time justifying its use from purely hydrodynamic principles. We show that sharp profiles, which appear in finite times in CHD, immediately dissolve into a higher hierarchy of reductions of GHD, with no sustained shock. CHD thereon fails to capture the correct hydrodynamics. We establish the correct hydrodynamic equations, which are finite-dimensional reductions of GHD characterized by multiple, disjoint Fermi seas. We further verify that at nonzero temperature, CHD fails at all nonzero times. Finally, we numerically confirm the emergence of hydrodynamics at zero temperature by comparing its predictions with a full quantum simulation performed using the NRG-TSA-abacus algorithm. The analysis is performed in the full interaction range, and is not restricted to either weak- or strong-repulsion regimes.