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arXiv:2603.23058 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Basis dependence of eigenstate thermalization

Lennart Dabelow, Christian Eidecker-Dunkel, Peter Reimann

cond-mat.stat-mechquant-phSubmitted Mar 24, 2026• Announced Mar 25, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

Eigenstate thermalization refers to the property that an energy eigenstate of a many-body system is indistinguishable from a thermal equilibrium ensemble at the same energy as far as expectation values of local observables are concerned. In systems with degeneracies, the choice of an energy eigenbasis is not unique and the fraction of basis states exhibiting eigenstate thermalization can vary. We present a simple example where this fraction vanishes in the thermodynamic limit for one basis choice, but remains nonzero for another choice. In other words, the weak eigenstate thermalization hypothesis is satisfied in the first, but violated in the second basis. We furthermore prove that degeneracies must abound whenever a system is simultaneously symmetric under spatial translations and reflection. Finally, we derive general bounds on how strongly eigenstate thermalization may depend on the choice of the basis, and we reveal some interesting implications regarding the temporal relaxation properties of such systems.

Journal reference
Phys. Rev. B 113, 094311 (2026)
DOI
10.1103/znfb-96vf
Comments
12 pages, 4 figures plus appendix 6 pages

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Eigenstate thermalization refers to the property that an energy eigenstate of a many-body system is indistinguishable from a thermal equilibrium ensemble at the same energy as far as expectation values of local observables are concerned. In systems with degeneracies, the choice of an energy eigenbasis is not unique and the fraction of basis states exhibiting eigenstate thermalization can vary. We present a simple example where this fraction vanishes in the thermodynamic limit for one basis choice, but remains nonzero for another choice. In other words, the weak eigenstate thermalization hypothesis is satisfied in the first, but violated in the second basis. We furthermore prove that degeneracies must abound whenever a system is simultaneously symmetric under spatial translations and reflection. Finally, we derive general bounds on how strongly eigenstate thermalization may depend on the choice of the basis, and we reveal some interesting implications regarding the temporal relaxation properties of such systems.
The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH), which asserts that every eigenstate of a many-body quantum system is indistinguishable from a thermal ensemble, plays a pivotal role in understanding thermalization of isolated quantum systems. Yet, no evidence has been obtained as to whether the ETH holds for all few-body operators in a chaotic system; such few-body operators include key quantities in statistical mechanics, such as the total magnetization, the momentum distributions, and their low-order thermal and quantum fluctuations. Here, we formulate a conjecture that for a generic nonintegrable system the ETH holds simultaneously for all mmm-body operators with m<α∗Nm < α_{\ast} Nm<α∗​N in the thermodynamic limit for some nonzero constant α∗>0α_{\ast} > 0α∗​>0. We first show the existence of such nontrivial constants for idealized (pseudo) random-matrix descriptions of many-body eigenstates. We then verify the conjecture for generic spin, Bose, and Fermi systems with local and few-body interactions by large-scale numerical calculations. Our results imply that generic systems satisfy the ETH simultaneously for all few-body operators, including their thermal and quantum fluctuations.
The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) posits how isolated quantum many-body systems thermalize, assuming that individual eigenstates at the same energy density have identical expectation values of local observables in the limit of large systems. While the ETH apparently holds across a wide range of interacting quantum systems, in this work we show that it requires generalization in the presence of thermal first-order phase transitions. We introduce a class of all-to-all spin models, featuring first-order thermal phase transitions that stem from two distinct mean-field solutions (two ``branches'') that exchange dominance in the many-body density of states as the energy is varied. We argue that for energies in the vicinity of the thermal phase transition, eigenstate expectation values do not need to converge to the same thermal value. The system has a regime with coexistence of two classes of eigenstates corresponding to the two branches with distinct expectation values at the same energy density, and another regime with Schrodinger-cat-like eigenstates that are inter-branch superpositions; these two regimes are separated by an eigenstate phase transition. We support our results by semiclassical calculations and an exact diagonalization study of a microscopic spin model, and argue that the structure of eigenstates in the vicinity of thermal first-order phase transitions can be experimentally probed via non-equilibrium dynamics.
Deriving conditions under which a macroscopic system thermalizes directly from the underlying quantum many-body dynamics of its microscopic constituents is a long-standing challenge in theoretical physics. The well-known eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) is presumed to be a key mechanism, but has defied rigorous verification for generic systems thus far. A weaker variant (weak ETH), by contrast, is provably true for a large variety of systems, including even many integrable models, but its implications with respect to the problem of thermalization are still largely unexplored. Here we analytically demonstrate that systems satisfying the weak ETH exhibit thermalization for two very natural classes of far-from-equilibrium initial conditions: the overwhelming majority of all pure states with a preset nonequilibrium expectation value of some given local observable, and the Gibbs states of a Hamiltonian which subsequently is subject to a quantum quench in the form of a sudden change of some local system properties.
The clustering property of an equilibrium bipartite correlation is one of the most general thermodynamic properties in noncritical many-body quantum systems. Herein, we consider the thermalization properties of a system class exhibiting the clustering property. We investigate two regimes, namely, regimes of high and low density of states corresponding to high- and low-energy regimes, respectively. We show that the clustering property is connected to several properties on the eigenstate thermalization through the density of states. Remarkably, the eigenstate thermalization is obtained in the low-energy regime with a sparse density of states, which is typically seen in gapped systems. For the high-energy regime, we demonstrate the ensemble equivalence between microcanonical and canonical ensembles even for a subexponentially small energy shell with respect to the system size, which eventually leads to the weak version of eigenstate thermalization.
This review gives a pedagogical introduction to the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH), its basis, and its implications to statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. In the first part, ETH is introduced as a natural extension of ideas from quantum chaos and random matrix theory (RMT). To this end, we present a brief overview of classical and quantum chaos, as well as RMT and some of its most important predictions. The latter include the statistics of energy levels, eigenstate components, and matrix elements of observables. Building on these, we introduce the ETH and show that it allows one to describe thermalization in isolated chaotic systems without invoking the notion of an external bath. We examine numerical evidence of eigenstate thermalization from studies of many-body lattice systems. We also introduce the concept of a quench as a means of taking isolated systems out of equilibrium, and discuss results of numerical experiments on quantum quenches. The second part of the review explores the implications of quantum chaos and ETH to thermodynamics. Basic thermodynamic relations are derived, including the second law of thermodynamics, the fundamental thermodynamic relation, fluctuation theorems, the fluctuation–dissipation relation, and the Einstein and Onsager relations. In particular, it is shown that quantum chaos allows one to prove these relations for individual Hamiltonian eigenstates and thus extend them to arbitrary stationary statistical ensembles. In some cases, it is possible to extend their regimes of applicability beyond the standard thermal equilibrium domain. We then show how one can use these relations to obtain nontrivial universal energy distributions in continuously driven systems. At the end of the review, we briefly discuss the relaxation dynamics and description after relaxation of integrable quantum systems, for which ETH is violated. We present results from numerical experiments and analytical studies of quantum quenches at integrability. We introduce the concept of the generalized Gibbs ensemble and discuss its connection with ideas of prethermalization in weakly interacting systems.